R. Kelly Trial: Sex Tape Screened, One Juror Exits

Opening statements went down yesterday in the R. Kelly trial, and so did one juror. Juror Sixty-eight, who was perhaps the prosecution's most valuable juror due to the fact that she was a rape victim, was forced to leave the panel after learning her job would not pay for her time away from work, thus making it impossible for her to maintain her mortgage. Meanwhile, the court was shown the complete version of the sex tape that was the catalyst for Kelly's child pornography charges. The 27-minute video, which was sent anonymously to a Chicago newspaper in 2002, shows a man the prosecution claims is Kelly having sex with a girl who may be as young as 13. The defense maintains it is not the "Trapped in the Closet" star on the tape, and the girl in question says it's not her in the video either. Stay tuned to Rock Daily for more updates on the trial of the Pied Piper of R&B.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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