SYNESTHETES +++ SELF.DESCRIBED**

Billy Joel

Songwriter · 1949- · chromesthesia, grapheme-color

Billy Joel has described seeing colors for melodies and letters, associating slower ballads with blues and greens and stronger rhythms with reds and oranges.

Billy Joel has discussed his synesthesia in interviews and in academic collections on the trait, describing melodies arriving with color: gentler, slower material in blues and greens, driving rhythmic material in reds, oranges, and golds. He has also described colors for vowels and letters, which points to a grapheme component alongside the musical one.

His accounts are notable for linking the colors to songwriting choices, using the color of a song in progress as information about what it wants to be.

Joel’s case is self-described and repeated across sources over many years, with the level of specific detail (which material goes with which color family) that casual list-articles usually lack.