Latest Release
- 1 FEB 2024
- 1 Song
- The Essential Billy Joel · 1973
- An Innocent Man · 1983
- Storm Front · 1989
- The Stranger · 1977
- The Stranger · 1977
- The Essential Billy Joel · 1977
- The Stranger · 1977
- 52nd Street · 1978
- Glass Houses · 1980
- River of Dreams · 1993
Essential Albums
- 1983
- In 1980, Billy Joel recorded his answer to punk and New Wave. He opens with the sound of a rock smashing a window, then “You May Be Right” swaggers in with a curled-lip vocal and guitars that chug and chime. He crosses ’50s rock moves (sassy handclaps, squawking sax) with late-’70s chunka-chunka guitars on “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” and still manages to make hearts swoon with the breezy, McCartney-esque sweetness of “Don’t Ask Me Why”.
- After his commercial breakthrough with 1977’s The Stranger, Billy Joel decided to stretch himself musically, and the outcome was 52nd Street. He was still excellent at writing pop hits and had a special knack for turning a cultural catchphrase into a sly commentary on contemporary values. “My Life” captured the mood of Baby Boomers who saw the limitations of the American Dream and sought their own path, while “Big Shot” poked fun at the pompousness of celebrity and high society. Both songs were radio smashes, continuing Joel’s hitmaking streak, and the ballad “Honesty” also charted and became one of his signature songs. Though 52nd Street went seven times platinum and was the first of Joel's albums to top the Billboard 200, it is a deep-cut record whose appeal goes well beyond its best-known tracks. It’s marked by jazz flourishes—the title itself invokes the heart of New York's mid-20th-century jazz scene—and the carefully sculpted drama of Broadway, and after the three hits that open the album, surprises abound. “Zanzibar” is among Joel’s more ambitious compositions, with tricky chord changes and touches of jazz fusion, including solos from trumpeter Freddie Hubbard; the buoyant “Half a Mile Away” features an entire horn section arranged by Dave Grusin. “Until the Night” finds Joel transforming his voice into the low, Tom Jones-like croon of a nightclub balladeer, a theatrical turn complemented by lush production featuring a string arrangement, while “Rosalinda’s Eyes” is warm and breezy, a Latin-tinged midtempo number with lightly strummed guitars and vibraphone. If The Stranger showed Joel’s sure hand with pop, 52nd Street was a showcase for his musical range, hinting at the wide variety of styles he would tackle in the coming years.
- Confidence is the key to Billy Joel’s finest studio album. Pitching himself somewhere between Elton John and Paul McCartney for melodic invention, he delivers songs that demand a muscular rock backing but are happy to flirt with Broadway sparkle to get their point across. And that’s not counting The Stranger’s two tentpole ballads—"Just the Way You Are" and "She’s Always a Woman”—each strong enough to fend for themselves in anyone's greatest hits.
- 1993
- 1989
- 1986
- 1983
- 1982
- 1980
- 1978
Artist Playlists
- The pop chameleon grounds both his ballads and hits with unflinching storytelling.
- The Long Island legend shows off his dynamic personality.
- Whether it’s a rocker or a ballad, the Piano Man gives it his all.
- Surprising left turns from the Piano Man.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
- Half a century of the Angry Young Man's idols.
- 2022
- 2022
- 2022
- 2022
- 2022
Appears On
- East Hampton High School Choir
- The Hassles featuring Billy Joel
More To Hear
- Jenn gets to know The Stranger on its 45th anniversary.
About Billy Joel
Broad, earnest and unreservedly sentimental, Billy Joel remains the quintessential showman of pop music. Raised in the planned suburb of Levittown, Long Island (a model for the postwar building boom), Joel spent his early career in Los Angeles, working briefly as the singer in a bar on Wilshire Boulevard—an experience commemorated in his signature song, “Piano Man”. He went on to become one of the most successful artists in pop, bridging reflective singer-songwriter material (1982’s The Nylon Curtain) with sock-hop nostalgia like “The Longest Time” and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” for a theatrical, particularly American sound whose resonances can be heard not only in piano balladeers, but in pop omnivores like Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga. In the 1990s, Joel shifted his energy to touring, remaining a perennial blockbuster well into the 2010s, performing more than 100 shows at Madison Square Garden, many of them sold out. (Having returned to Long Island in the mid-'70s, Joel commuted by helicopter.) Like his friend Bruce Springsteen, Joel has an air of the everyman about him, the megastar somehow intimately in touch with the aspirations and disappointments of ordinary people. A proud entertainer with an almost religious faith in the accessibility of popular music, Joel once reflected on his job as such, to Rolling Stone: “We go into the studio, the song gets mixed and it’s eventually heard through tiny car-radio speakers. We also like being together onstage. You should never lose sight of the fact that you’re there to entertain. People don’t pay money to see art. They don’t pay money for you to sit there and be Billy Joel.”
- HOMETOWN
- Bronx, NY, United States
- BORN
- 9 de mayo de 1949
- GENRE
- Rock