In the Pop and Pop Rock Canon, there is a spectrum of talents. In that light, between Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney, Paul Simon sits in the dead center. Halfway between Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, we put Neil Young. Halfway between Paul McCartney and Paul Simon lies a myriad of rock bands, from Fleetwood Mac to Chicago, and as we inch closer to the edge, the Eagles and U2. Elton John is on the McCartney side, Jackson Browne is on the Dylan side, though in many ways, those two would like to trade places. John Lennon and David Bowie transcend the spectrum altogether. Rod Stewart is on the outside looking in, along with the Monkees, Joe Cocker, and Johnny Rivers. So where does Billy Joel fit in?
I suppose it depends on which Billy Joel we’re talking about: the Morose Mozartean on Cold Spring Harbor (1971), the Fragile Nostalgic on Piano Man (1973), the Bitter Romantic on The Stranger (1977), the Soulful Bubblegummer on An Innocent Man (1983), or the Middle Aged Pasticheur on River of Dreams (1993). Where critics maul Joel for his lack of adherence to a particular style and subsequently, a consistent voice, it is those very same critics who laud the Beatles and the aforementioned Dylan for their “maturation”. Why should Joel be any different?
Perhaps it’s because he had “too many hits”, as seems to be the point in the HBO Documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes, a two-part rendezvous into the life and legacy of the best-selling American solo artist of the 20th century, who is not named Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley. “Selling” seems to be the operative word here. From his 25 world tours to his highly publicized relationship with All-Time Supermodel Christie Brinkley, Billy Joel’s point often seems to be his product. That applies to many rock stars, McCartney included, but the problem is that McCartney never wrote a song called “Allentown”.
On the flip side, Bruce Springsteen has an album called Nebraska and has a net worth of over a billion dollars. Still, there’s something so profoundly simple about Springsteen, both in terms of style and substance, that his surface-level contradictions feel endearing, or at least genuine.
No, no, the problem with Billy Joel is that, for all his self-proclaimed emotional density, there is something inherently unlikable about him. Instead of turning inwards, Joel’s instinct is to transform analysis into anger and reflection into rage. Yet, when stilted on stage in a suit while sundering soliloquies about Italian restaurants, that anger feels confusing, or worse, unjustified.
It’s easy to see, then, why his target demographic is not angsty teenagers in dimly lit parking lots nor reclusive master’s students writing dissertations on the sociopolitical impacts of the Moog Synthesizer in 20th-century rock. It’s career politicians, often centrists. It’s wine moms whose husbands are out golfing. It’s playing in the background of every bar where the cocktails are weak and overpriced.
It’s also people like me, those who understand that the problem with criticism as a whole is its inability to, as AV Club writer Zach Handlin puts it, “quantify the ineffable, those moments in art that do not leave a specific conscious impression, but instead a feeling that lingers for days.” Billy Joel’s music has plenty of those ineffable moments, more than most artists. His music has stayed with me for decades, and I’m only 31 years old. I think Billy Joel… is good. For that reason, perhaps for that reason alone, I write this album ranking.
For the sake of brevity, I explain the methodology of these rankings as they go along. Keep in mind, though, that the point of this exercise is ultimately about understanding Billy Joel’s music. It’s true that I find some of his records better than others, and in certain ways, I might dare to say they are “objectively” better. The reason why some are ranked higher than others is that they allow us to comprehend Joel’s chameleon, to unpeel the layers he so ardently enfolds around his listeners. Ultimately, its purpose is to circle back to the aforementioned spectrum and determine where we can situate these 12 studio albums, within the Pop and Pop Rock Canon, if anywhere.
12. The Bridge (1986)
Billy Joel released 13 studio albums, a series of live albums, and a greatest hits compilation to complete the discography. The 13th and final studio album, 2001’s Fantasies & Delusions, is a collection of classical compositions, featuring renowned pianist and composer Hyung-ki Joo. Very cool! For the purposes of this article, though, it is irrelevant to consider, as it does not aid our project at all.
For that matter, neither does The Bridge. Released in 1986, during the height of the Christie Brinkley-Billy Joel rendezvous, it seems to pastiche its tracks together haphazardly with synthesizers and a bevy of bass guitars. The documentary And So It Goes contends that Joel was simply too happy during this period of his life to make good music.
Perhaps that’s true, but even if so, that serves more as an explanation than an excuse. The guest appearances by Ray Charles and Cyndi Lauper serve as another strange spectrum, with Joel lying somewhere in between. The best track on the album, “A Matter of Trust”, peaked at number one on the charts, a sign that even in the era of rock anorexia that was the mid-1980s, Billy Joel’s name seemed to transcend fashion.
That said, I’m not sure this album has a whole lot to do with happiness. Another argument that And So It Goes proliferates is that Billy Joel was never happy or truly satisfied. That case could be made about every album, even this one. That tension is rarely reflected in Joel’s discography, and despite this opportune moment for such psychological self-reflection, Joel is simply unwilling to go the distance. Furthermore, if The Bridge was truly his homage to “Domestic Bliss”, I’d like to hear it reflected lyrically, sonically, in anything really. Instead, this album feels like a self-imposed duty to make another album.
11. Storm Front (1989)
I almost wish Billy Joel had never released “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. Had he not, his most popular songs would be much more aligned: “Piano Man”, “Uptown Girl”, “She’s Always a Woman”, and “My Life” all exhibit consistency, both in form and content. Joel is not a man of grand political gestures nor obscure social allusions. Yet, it’s impossible to shield him from the criticisms of Political Rock as a genre, nor of his particular manifestation of that here. Joel’s indiscriminate litany of random Wikipedia entries on the track rivals Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” or John Lennon’s “God” only in length, but is an otherwise subpar derision of songs with a “message”.
Because of the popularity and subsequent divisiveness of that song, it’s easy to forget the other nine tracks on this record. Perhaps that’s for the best, as 1989 was a rock revival year of sorts, with Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy, Neil Young’s Freedom, and Don Henley’s The End of Innocence each making waves, both critically and commercially.
Yet, Joel’s indignation about making an unnecessary sequel to The Bridge hampers his ability to create something fresh. The concluding track, “And So It Goes”, which serves as the title to the recent documentary, is a top-five Billy Joel track according to Billy Joel. Perhaps that’s because it’s the only track on this album – his last three albums – that actually sounds like Billy Joel.
As for the rest of the album? “I Go to Extremes” and “Leningrad” are fine numbers. Still, Storm Front is a failure of conception and a fair warning to artists who try to pivot when they simply need to evolve.
10. River of Dreams (1993)
Billy Joel is an artist full of inconsistencies, so it only makes sense that this piece of criticism mimics that a little. I appreciate Joel’s stylistic changes on River of Dreams, especially when contrasted with his previous two albums. What seemed like it could beget a new era for Joel turned out to be his departure from the studio altogether.
Songs like “The Great Wall of China” and the title track are, both lyrically and melodically, steps toward something fresh, at least for Joel. There’s some imitation here, some Paul Simon Graceland, a touch of Michael Jackson-esque Dangerous, and even a hint of Bowie, whichever Bowie you prefer. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and no one flatters themselves quite like Billy Joel.
That said, River of Dreams is a far cry from The Stranger. Recorded on Shelter Island, New York, the album feels isolated from the rest of Joel’s discography, perhaps a noble ambition, but it is also alienated from the world around him. Released in 1993, there’s nothing timely nor timeless about this record. It’s very listenable, as is all of Joel’s music (which, by the way, often goes unmentioned in criticism and separates him from the likes of his more renowned contemporaries).
The problem with its listenability is that its virtuousness is entirely surface-level. The River of Dreams is rather shallow on the second listen, and by the third play, the record leaves us swimming upstream for meaning. Joel would most likely hate these puns, and for that reason, they will stay in here.
9. Streetlife Serenade (1974)
If I could remove one album from Billy Joel’s discography, it would be this one. Simply put, Joel’s discography would be a whole lot cleaner going straight from Piano Man to Turnstiles. That’s not because Streetlife Serenade is his worst, or even that particularly bad. As I said, Joel’s trademark is his listenability, and no doubt, there are some very pleasing tracks on this record. “Roberta” and “Last of the Big Time Spenders” are a couple of spiffy ditties on this journey down the country rock riviera, concluding with the entirely instrumental “The Mexican Connection”.
The album does seem to diverge, both melodically and thematically, from Joel’s earliest work, which I suppose is hypothetical praise. Had it been released by Don McLean or the band America, we might even say it is a good album, considering the standards.
With this album, though, Billy Joel portends himself above the ilk of being good on relative terms. He wants to be great. By 1974, he had already been “great” at least twice over.
I guess the problem with lists like these might be in the art of comparison. How does one compare something to itself? Streetlife Serenade renders that question irrelevant by experimenting with a distinct sound. It just doesn’t work. There’s a reason why this album was Billy Joel’s final chapter in his Los Angeles rendezvous, as opposed to his first as the lead singer of a Buffalo Springfield cover band.
And So It Goes makes a big deal of the song, “The Entertainer”, as Joel’s first sardonic gripe at The Music Industry. Bully for him. There might be broader philosophical issues with the tune, but my biggest issue is that it feels out of place on the album. It’s a notable single wedged into a rather unremarkable concept. To put it bluntly, Streetlife Serenade is an unnecessary stepping stone that would have been better left as malleable clay rather than hardened cement.
8. The Nylon Curtain (1982)
In the And So It Goes documentary, Billy Joel claims that he’s proudest of the work he did on this album, which tends to be what artists say when their work underdelivers. To be fair to Joel, the early 1980s were a strange time in classic rock. In this era of late-stage disco, where synth pop and street punk reigned supreme, those halcyon days of Laurel Canyon and Beatlemania seemed as outdated as the telegram.
Where most 1960s and ’70s rockers fled to the shadows of their English castles and SoHo lofts, a few attempted to adapt, if not evolve as musicians. Bowie released Let’s Dance. Fleetwood Mac released Mirage. McCartney hung his hat on Michael Jackson, a man famous for rolling hats down his sleeve.
Billy Joel, who was never quite as established as McCartney nor as experimental as Bowie, had to pivot out of his comfort zone in a way that felt real, but also, because it’s Billy Joel, so it’s also very polished. Indeed, The Nylon Curtain is a very tidy album, beginning with the statement of “Allentown” and ending with the question of “Where’s the Orchestra?” It features a full range of Joel’s most notable emotions, the angst of “Pressure”, the vague cognizance of “Goodnight Saigon”, and the moroseness of “She’s Right on Time”. The best track on the album, “Surprises”, feels ironically titled, given the lack of revelation on this album.
If one were to artificially generate a Billy Joel album in a lab, it would come pretty close to The Nylon Curtain, sans a few snare drums. While that’s understandable, given the grand demise of classic rock, it’s also not faultless in an album ranking. In Joel’s attempt to make an album for the 1980s, he forgot what made him so prominent in the 1970s. The Nylon Curtain stands as a reminder that progress, when too neatly arranged, can sometimes sound like restraint rather than reinvention.
7. Turnstiles (1976)
Now we get to the good stuff. Billy Joel’s fourth album is also the first of his “return” to New York, although he was never really a Los Angelino. No, Billy Joel represents the grit and grime of subway grates and dollar hot dog stands, or at least the view of them from his private car on the drive to Montauk.
That dichotomy is perfectly illustrated in Turnstiles by the contrast, both lyrically and melodically, between the opening two songs: “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” and “Summer Highland Falls”. On the one hand, Joel presents as a man of the masses. He does so in full regalia on stage in front of 50,000 of them. It might be a stretch to call this disparity “self-awareness”, but it is wholly apparent here.
A song like “Prelude/Angry Young Man”, however, veers into the territory of elusive autobiography, much to the distaste of his most ardent critics. Consider the following lines: “Give a moment or two to the angry young man, with his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand, he’s been stabbed in the back, he’s been misunderstood, it’s a comfort to know his intentions are good.” Are Joel’s intentions good? If they are, why would that be comforting?
Perhaps these questions are meant to be left unanswered, hidden behind Joel’s feral candor and a remarkable piano riff, one of his best. Or perhaps Joel intends for the answer to be self-evident. Yes, he is good, and it’s good that he’s good. So, why all this anger? It’s that we don’t believe him.
There are two standout tracks on this album, albeit for entirely opposite reasons. “New York State of Mind” is an ode to grandiosity itself, for although Joel claims to feel more comfortable on the Hudson River Line than in a limousine, all roads seem to lead back to that sleepless city. This ballad is beautifully accompanied by both saxophone and soliloquy, with an orchestral arrangement to boot. Joel’s voice feels refined, in admiration rather than in admonishment, of that place he simply names his “reality”.
The song has become a pop standard and one of Joel’s most distinguished tracks. For good reason, too. Any criticism of Joel’s work, and I’ve listed many here, seems to fall flat when compared to the splendor of this song. Forgive me for sounding sappy, but very few artists could pull off this number. Billy Joel does it with ease.
The other song is “James”, a deep track if there ever was one. This song is hardly a throwaway. Instead, it’s a heartfelt, if not heartbreaking, meditation on a character who, whether fictional or real, seems to function as a stand-in for Joel’s persona. It’s a soft number, but one that is quite charming if not, dare I say, profound.
Consider the refrain: “Do what’s good for you, or you’re not good for anybody.” No one would mistake Billy Joel for Shakespeare, but that’s the kind of line that stays with a listener for long after the song is over. This is the kind of song that not only silences the critics but might get them, if only just for a moment, to change their minds.
6. Glass Houses (1980)
Let’s start with the obvious: Glass Houses rocks. The first four tracks of this album (“You May Be Right”, “Sometimes a Fantasy”, “Don’t Ask Me Why”, and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”) rival the opening tracks of any album from any artist during any time period. Not only that, but they demand the kind of attention from the audience that Joel constantly craves.
You can accuse Billy Joel of a lot of things, but modesty is not one of them. After listening to the opening numbers of Glass Houses, though, that request would be unnecessary. Joel pulls off his bravado in a stunning way, which has allowed him to perform any and all of these numbers live in front of thousands of fans for the past 40 years.
The rest of this album doesn’t quite meet this standard. If it did, we’d be talking about Glass Houses much like its near contemporaries, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. That’s not to say that they aren’t conceptual fits, though. Glass Houses is Joel’s homage to a harder edge, solidifying an acknowledgment of his critics’ grievances about his more tender side. The album cover alone is a sufficient response, an image of Joel throwing a rock at the large windows through someone’s vacation home off the coast of Montauk.
Along with being one of his most commercially successful albums, Glass Houses might also be Joel’s most critically acclaimed, especially in retrospect. Cultural savant Chuck Klostermann lauds this album in his 2003 book Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, praising its universality. Klostermann enjoys the second half of the album more than the first, which probably speaks more to his general distaste for Joel’s music as a whole.
Music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine puts it best: “It may not be punk, then again, it may be his best concept of punk.” My take on Glass Houses: for all of Joel’s raving and drooling, he certainly knows how to make it sound good.
5. An Innocent Man (1983)
Like most things with Billy Joel, and for that matter, with most things in life, you either love it or hate it. An Innocent Man is Joel’s most conceptual work, a trip down memory lane, laced with homages to doo-wop, soul, and, more importantly, Joel’s appreciation of them. Each song represents a distinct reverence: “Easy Money” is inspired by James Brown, while “Uptown Girl” is supposedly reminiscent of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Whether one appreciates these tributes or not, it is impossible to deny how coherent the album feels.
An Innocent Man features three hits: “Uptown Girl”, “An Innocent Man”, and my favorite, “Tell Her About It”. Each song works on three different levels: they are standout tracks, they cohere on the album, and they work just as well as commandments to the 1950s as they did innovations in the 1980s. Coming off the disappointment that was The Nylon Curtain, An Innocent Man feels like a return to what always separated him from the pack: himself, or in this case, what made him himself.
Any time an artist releases a concept album, it begs the question: Why? Why this concept, and in this case, what is Joel trying to say? Is he saying he loves the music of the 1950s? Does he wish the ’80s were more like the ’50s? Is he pessimistic about the future?
If we’ve learned anything about Joel, it’s that he’s no philosopher nor prophet. He might, however, be a savant. These tracks masterfully capture the essence of that halcyon era. They’re catchy, spiffy, swinging and a hell of a lot of fun. It’s not that one could mistake this record for one released in, say, 1955; the production is far too complex, and the lyrics too biting and erudite. It’s more so that, despite all of Joel’s posturing, he’s probably a better actor than we’d like to give him credit for.
What’s more, this work captures a hyper-specific sentiment, whether intentionally or incidentally. The 1980s were, in many ways, themselves an homage to the ’50s. The president was Ronald Reagan, the biggest movie of the decade was Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future, and everyone was wearing leather. Perhaps the concept of An Innocent Man wasn’t to encapsulate an era, but rather to isolate a certain nostalgia. As to the question of why make it, let me respond with all the furor of Joel’s sardonic notoriety: Why not?!?
4. Piano Man (1973)
If Billy Joel could have only released one song, it probably would have been “Piano Man”, a moniker that became his manifesto. Another hit of Joel’s that has been overplayed to the point of feeling superficial, this song’s familiarity should not be mistaken for frivolity. It’s truly a thoughtful exposé on Americana, or at least a particular version of it.
While no one knows exactly if “John at the bar” was actually a friend of Joel’s, or what the hell a “real estate novelist” is, the song manifests the philosophy of “imagination as a form of memory” to a paradigmatic level. The universality of the sentiment in here, the loneliness inherent in a crowded room, is so entirely human, yet somehow, also uniquely Joel’s. This baroque barfly might not wax poetic about conflicts in Vietnam, but he knows how long it takes the ice cubes to melt in a gin and tonic. As it turns out, it’s the same amount of time it takes him to leave a conversation.
“Piano Man” is both a song and an album, though, and that’s often forgotten in these conversations. Unlike “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, on Storm Front, though, the rest of the songs do not feel like filler. Indeed, Piano Man would be a fascinating title for Storm Front if we excluded the song, almost like a concept. With its mix of country rock in “Ain’t No Crime”, baroque rock in “Ballad of Billy the Kid”, and just downright classic rock in “Captain Jack”, Piano Man is the album that encapsulates all of Joel’s future evolutions.
Unlike the grandiosity of Glass Houses or the crucible of River of Dreams, Piano Man feels intimate, a turning inwards as opposed to outwards, as if we are sitting at the back booth of a lounge, or maybe even Joel’s own living room.
While “Piano Man” is far from Joel’s worst track on the album (it’s almost certainly the best), it stands in a strange thematic juxtaposition with the rest of the album. Take this verse from the side two track, “If I Only Had the Words”: “If I never find the song to sing you / If you always find it hard to comprehend / Well, you know there wouldn’t be much meaning / If I had to sing those tired words again.”
To conduct a brief lyrical analysis: in “Piano Man”, Joel, or at least the song’s character, always knows which “song to sing”. That’s why the manager gives him a smile, why the regulars shuffle in, and why the chorus of the song is a chant, if not a plea, to continue singing.
The piano man might be lonely, but he is far from insecure. Here, however, he’s not so sure. He’s apprehensive, cynical, and above all, vulnerable. This is a private moment, one that belongs in the dressing room before a show or on the car ride afterward. It feels like we’ve entered the middle of a conversation. In “Piano Man,” Joel externalizes these anxieties onto others. What is most admirable about this album, however, is how internal and real they are.
3. Cold Spring Harbor (1971)
If I had half the guts Billy Joel has, I would sit Cold Spring Harbor at number one on this list because it is my favorite Billy Joel album and, for a time, I thought it was the best album ever made. That was when I was 23; I had just moved to New York for poetry school and was drunk every night, which is the kind of cliché that would even make Billy Joel roll his eyes. This sappy, melancholic, and at times, morose Joel spoke to me, down to my much-tortured soul, as does everything when you’re an alcoholic.
Relistening to Cold Spring Harbor now, years older and sober, does not spark the same sort of inspiration, though it does make me writhe with envy. How can someone so inexperienced sound so confident? Perhaps he was naive, untainted by success and unmarred by its consequences. Or perhaps, even by the age of 22, Billy Joel already had a lot to complain about.
And So It Goes makes the latter case, pointing not only to Joel’s troubled childhood but also to difficulties finding his footing in the music industry. The documentary singles out the production of this album as a particularly frustrating experience, even driving him to thoughts of suicide and, what the documentary calls, “heavy drinking”.
While this narrative might be overplayed in the Pop and Pop Rock Canon, it manifests in a salient way throughout Cold Spring Harbor. This 30-minute and 24-second experience might have been Joel’s first and last statement as a solo artist, putting him in the conversation with Nick Drake rather than Nickelback. It presents Joel’s cockiness as endearing, or at least forgivable. After all, the only thing more tragic than death is dying.
The album is considered by many, including Joel himself, to be a failure, which feels all too convenient for a debut that feels distant from the rest of Joel’s discography, both melodically and lyrically. The only song on this entire album that feels like a “Billy Joel song” is “You Look So Good to Me”, and even then, it would probably be left on the cutting-room floor of later albums, or at least heavily remastered.
The unfortunate truth for fans of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, “Uptown Girl”, and $1,000 concert tickets is that this album is not, by any means, a failure. It is a resounding meditation on a nearly lost life, a modernist rendition of a Joycean Bildungsroman, and, above all, heartbreaking in a way Joel felt compelled to address nowhere else in his career.
Take a song like “Tomorrow is Today”, for instance. If one were to only examine the lyrics, one might believe it was a lost track on Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, Lennon’s Mind Games, or even Bowie’s Hunky Dory. Combine that with Joel’s effortless melody and treacly vocals, and it sounds like Paul McCartney covering Dylan or Lennon or Bowie. Come to think of it, that analogy applies to every song on the entire album.
“Everybody Loves You Now” is a fun, poppy outburst with a twist of despondency. “Got to Begin Again” is the paradigm of a closing track. “She’s Got a Way” is Joel’s best love song, if not his best song altogether. If I were to attempt to put it on any other album, the only one that comes to mind is Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Yes, I am making the argument that Cold Spring Harbor is Joel’s most Beatlesque, which is to say, his most definable. Ironically, it is also his most sonically distinct and the one he wants us all to forget. Why? Well, in the documentary, Joel despises his vocals on the album, claiming it makes him sound like a chipmunk.
Something Joel might not know about chipmunks is that they spend most of their lives burrowing underground to hide from many potential predators. Yet, despite their desired obscurity, they are still one of the most recognizable creatures on earth. It goes to show that no matter how hard you try to hide from it, you can’t escape what you’ve created.
2. The Stranger (1977)
So 1977 might not have been the greatest year in classic rock history, but it is arguably its most iconic. David Bowie’s Low and Heroes, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Steely Dan’s Aja, the Clash’s debut, Queen’s News of the World, and the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack all entered the scene this year. If ever there was a year to situate Billy Joel, it would be 1977: as we entered the punk rock revolution, exited through classic rock’s grand finale, and found ourselves in the midst of the disco epoch.
The Stranger is widely regarded as Joel’s most seminal work, his best and most recognizable. Obviously, I disagree, though only slightly. For me, what makes The Stranger stand out in the context of classic rock, if not music altogether, is also what makes it blend into the rest of his discography. It takes elements from everything discussed so far and masters them. What are we left with? Which Billy Joel are we left with?
Let’s approach these questions through specifics. First and foremost, The Stranger features a litany of Joel’s greatest hits. “Movin’ Out” is an enviable opening track for any album. It synthesizes Joel as an artist, referencing places as far away as Hackensack, New Jersey, and as close as Sullivan Street on the Lower West Side of Manhattan, encompassing the entirety of Joel’s worldview. Yet, with lines like “You can pay Uncle Sam with the overtime. Is that all you get for your money?” he also captures the universality of every workingman’s soul, which often seems Joel’s primary objective.
“Just the Way You Are” is a titillating soliloquy, one that achieves both commercial acclaim and critical approval, a rare feat for any artist, especially Joel. “Only the Good Die Young” is a fiery and fierce ballad that seems to inspire the entirety of Glass Houses, though it is more lyrically resonant than any track on that album. “She’s Always a Woman” gets the most attention from the As So It Goes documentary, perhaps because of its seemingly autobiographical nature, but also because Paul McCartney is quoted as saying that he was “jealous of it”, which is a McCartneyism for “having heard it before”. Still, it’s a riveting love song and a standout melody, one of many grandiose Joel’s hallmarks.
There are two other songs, however, that separate The Stranger from that crowded room in 1977. “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” is either a seven-minute expressive epic or a sprawling New Yorker exposé one flips through at a magazine stand. It’s certainly narrative in nature, but whose story is it telling? Joel is always credited with his observational cadence, but it often leads us to more questions about the narrator than about the story he’s telling.
“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” forgoes that question entirely through a seeming omniscience, an evaporated “I” that haunts the track, but never quite reveals itself. In this way, it embodies Joel’s most striking qualities while escaping his worst attributes. Joel has often claimed it is his favorite song, maybe because it’s a lot of fun to play live. Yet if we are searching for a deeper reason as to why, we’re missing the point. It’s meant as the sort of superficiality that has often plagued Joel’s ventures into the human psyche. It’s the best version of what he does so well, and with orchestral accompaniment to boot.
That leads us to “Vienna”, a song so eloquent that it’s almost upsetting. For all the admonishment of the artist bleeding into the artwork that plagues music criticism, “Vienna” is an example of pulling it off. A line like “Slow down, you’re doing fine / You can’t be everything you wanna be before your time / Although it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight” could apply to Joel, and probably does, but it also doesn’t matter because it has applied to every human who has ever experienced anything worthwhile. Not to mention, it features Joel’s most effortlessly musical introduction, combined with a tantalizing accordion solo, and a softly spellbinding orchestral accompaniment to complete a perfectly paced 3-minute and 34-second song.
As much as I love Cold Spring Harbor, and as lyrically cogent as this song would fit on that album, “Vienna” displays the kind of mastery and maturity that only 1977 Billy Joel could have made. It’s Joel’s manifesto, along the lines of Lennon’s “Imagine”, McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed”, and Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”. Since I’m making extreme cases, I’ll take them to their extremity: “Vienna” is not just Billy Joel’s best song, but it is, in fact, the best song of the 1970s.
So, how then could The Stranger not be ranked number one on this list? Since I’ve referenced the Beatles beforehand, I will conclude with them here. The most interesting part of the As So It Goes documentary appears in the making of The Stranger, when Joel initially consults former Beatles producer George Martin to produce this album. Martin accepts Joel’s offer, on the condition that Joel replace his backing band with more classically trained musicians.
The documentary goes on to defend Joel’s group of ragtag, Long Island hooligans as a necessary component of the music itself. It creates a fascinating alternate universe, but also highlights a potential issue with this one. Joel’s music here, aided by producer Phil Ramone, is refined and polished, both lyrically and melodically. Joel’s insistence on “sticking to guns” begs the question of what, exactly, he was shooting at. While The Stranger, whose title itself is a bit of a winking nod, does give us a pretty good answer, the bang is not nearly as resounding as…
1. 52nd Street (1978)
Before beginning this analysis, it is important to revisit the initial twofold goal of this project: to rank all of Billy Joel’s studio albums and to figure out how to situate him in the Pop and Pop Rock Canon. By ranking 52nd Street number one, I am not only claiming it is Joel’s best album, but also the album that helps us understand him.
As for the first claim, let’s turn to the objective facts. This is Joel’s only album to win the Grammy Award for “Best Album of the Year”. It was his first album to reach #1 on the Billboard 200, which it held for eight consecutive weeks. It was also the first album ever released on CD – a fun fact if there ever was one. It is the album that launched Joel into the stratosphere of pop music sensation. At a time when nothing seemed less fashionable than a 29-year-old suburban prick in a thousand-dollar suit, Billy Joel was the most popular recording artist of that year.
Now, onto the subjective realities: 52nd Street fully embraces Joel in a way no other album does. It is deeply, painfully self-aware and unforgiving, simultaneously tender and biting. Seen as a follow-up to the commercial breakthrough that was The Stranger, 52nd Street is both a thank you and fuck you, that most delicious dichotomy.
This album features a jazzier accompaniment to Joel’s vocals. Gone are the kindhearted violins and solemn piano poems; they’ve been replaced with hard percussion and flashy saxophones, especially prominent in songs like “Half a Mile Away” and the ending of “Stiletto”. The sensitivity from The Stranger remains, but is perhaps transformed into a soreness. Take the opening lines from “Rosalinda’s Eyes”: “I play nights in the Spanish part of town / I’ve got music in my hands / The work is hard to find / But that don’t get me down / Rosalinda understands.”
Joel certainly does have music in his hands, but here, it’s not folded in the shape of a prayer. His blessing is his curse, his rose his thorn. There’s something a bit conceited about that sentiment, but in this case, it’s quite weighty. Joel’s status is now in full force, and he’s thoughtful about it.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the opening song, “Big Shot”. The “you” throughout the number could very easily be a stand-in for the “I”, and it reads as much as a diary entry as it does a review in The Village Voice. Yet there is something relatable to this track, isn’t there? Ask every hungover 20-something. Ask anyone who’s done karaoke. “You had to be a big shot, didn’t cha?” In Joel’s case, at least his narcissism sells records.
It’s the opening three tracks of this album, “Big Shot”, “Honesty”, and “My Life” that cement 52nd Street’s status as Joel’s superlative effort. The album gives him a referendum on himself, moxie and all. He knows what we’re thinking before we’ve had time to think it, and by the time those thoughts reach their conclusions, he’s declared them inevitable. Billy Joel may be worthy of critique, a lot of it, but then he is also worthy of response. It’s, as Joel put it, “going on the American way”. If 52nd Street is, in fact, Joel’s response, what a response it is.
Unlike “Vienna,” though, there’s no true masterpiece on this album. The closest is probably “Stiletto”, due primarily to its resounding instrumental ending, Joel’s absolute best. Lyrically, though, there is one line that speaks volumes to Joel, and allows us to investigate the second prong of this musical fork, that of our understanding. In “Stiletto”, Joel laments: “You’ve been bought, you’ve been sold / You’ve been locked outside the door / But you stand there pleading / With your insides bleeding / ‘Cause you deep down want some more.”
Herein lies Billy Joel’s place in classic rock. Bought and sold, locked outside the door. To which room? Perhaps the room where Neil Young and Bob Dylan talk about their least favorite wars. Perhaps the one where Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury stake claim on the tightest pants. Or maybe the noisy one that’s full of a bunch of critics, whose names would cause blank stares on the faces of the masses. Billy Joel was, is, and will always be popular, but he wants more.
You can hear it from “She’s Got a Way” all the way through “River of Dreams”. You can hear it throughout the documentary, in the interviews, in the exposés, and you will, come the time, hear it in the obituaries. More of what? Affection? Fame? Vintage porches?
Having listened to and reviewed each Billy Joel album, the one thing he demands, if not craves, is respect. Throughout this article, I’ve made flippant remarks at his expense. Despite all his talent, there’s something inherently stale about desire, especially when it comes across as desperation. To understand Billy Joel, though, is to understand that he’s willing to take a punch so that he can deliver the blow. It’s only fair that we, as critics, follow suit.
Here in Billy Joel’s discography, we have 13 solid albums, at least seven good ones, four great ones, and two of the best in pop rock’s entire 20th century. So, where to sit Billy Joel amongst his contemporaries at the Pop and Pop Rock table? He can sit wherever the hell he wants.