A friend frantically called 911 shortly after noon Saturday from the singer’s Greenwich Village apartment saying Joel, 23, had taken several pills, the official told The Associated Press. Joel took eight pills, though officials didn’t know what kind she had ingested, an official said; it wasn’t clear whether she had accidentally overdosed or attempted suicide, the official said.

The official wasn’t authorized to publicly disclose the matter and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Joel is hospitalized in stable condition and receiving treatment, Joel publicist Claire Mercuri said Saturday. She wouldn’t elaborate.

“We are currently assessing her needs,” she said.

Her father said she will recover.

“She is going to be fine,” Billy Joel told New York’s Newsday newspaper on Saturday night.

Fire Department records indicate that paramedics responded to the West Village building where Joel lives at 12:21 p.m. Saturday and transported one woman to St. Vincent’s Hospital. The fire department declined to identify the patient.

Joel, who was raised in Sag Harbor, a village on Long Island, attended New York University for a short time before dropping out to focus on her music career, according to her MySpace page. Her parents were divorced in 1994 after nine years of marriage.

The singer, songwriter and pianist self-released a short album in 2006 and debuted a new song, “Invisible,” this year about a failed relationship with the opening lyrics, “They say it doesn’t matter/This love is in my mind/We never got it right, anyway.”

In a MySpace blog post this summer, Joel described herself as “forgotten” and said she was finding it hard to meet a nice guy.

“Just Men. UGH!!! MEN!!!!” she wrote in August. “I’m so terrible at dating – I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it! And I HATE the game-playing! Can’t stand it.”

Joel had upcoming performances scheduled in the city, including at the New York Stock Exchange tree lighting ceremony Thursday.