The Stranger

It's fashionable to rank on Billy Joel. Hell, he brought it on himself with the 2nd act of his career in the 80s. Actually, this is one of those rare times when it's legitimate to talk about an artist's personal life impacts his professional work. Billy Joel made bank in the 70s, but his accountant embezzled it all and fled with his ill gotten gains to Brazil. (Joel's wife Christie Brinkley, an astute businesswoman who happened to also be a model, was the one who figured out he was being swindled.) Just about the time that Billy Joel was set to wind down his career, he was forced to go back to work and rebuild his fortune. It showed in his subsequent work. All the accusations against Joel, that he was a hack, a journeyman without a soul, an expert at mimicking other better artists, a charlatan and a fake, were seemingly confirmed by tripe like We Didn't Start The Fire and Pressure. But it wasn't always so. Billy Joel's earnestness and tin pan alley style songcraft and slick and mannered performance style couldn't be less fashionable nowadays, but he was actually a skilled musician who had a knack for penning sharply observed working class vignettes. Nowhere was this more evident than in The Stranger, Joel's commercial peak. Aside from Just The Way You Are, which was inescapable in weddings for at least a generation, the album is stuffed with earworms and memorable tales like Moving Out, Only The Good Die Young, Get It Right The First Time, and Scenes From an Italian Restaurant. Only the closer Everybody Has A Dream, with Billy Joel channeling his inner Ray Charles, tips into unrestrained bathos. For those who despise Billy Joel, I get it, but the craft and skill here are undeniable. I myself prefer my music much less mainstream, not so slick, etc, so I'll dun this pretty much perfectly executed album a star. 4/5

Fucking great album. Tons of tracks that stand out as singles, but also work together to tell a complete and compelling story

Yikes...Billy Joel. The natural reaction to being asked to listen to Billy Joel is to recoil. This is the man that brought the world Uptown Girl, after all. The video from the Westlife cover version of that song still occasionally frequents my nightmares. Those four (or is it five?) cherubic Irish scamps, running amok in some kind of 50s cafeteria, dancing with mops and buckets in their blue rockabilly shirts. How can I forgive Billy Joel for being the nexus event that led to that?! The problem is, you can't help but enjoy The Stranger. It's the sort of album you might expect The Special Forces to pump through a tannoy into a Guantanamo cell, on repeat - along with the Barney theme tune - assuming it will grind a terrorist suspect into confession, only to find it has indoctrinated them into being Kool-Aid-drinking, American Dream-obsessing aficionados. It's just so American. But it's the America of a not-too-distant but completely bygone era. Some pre-Internet other-world where people lived like the lead characters from Friends. Close your eyes and imagine Chandler Bing listening to 'Just the Way You Are', before running out into the hustle of Fifth Avenue in his navy cashmere overcoat and chasing after the girl of his dreams, barging people out of the way so that he can catch up with her and then have a panic attack and not tell her how he feels. Like Hootie and the Blowfish's 'Cracked Rear View', Billy Joel's 'The Stanger' is music for the Chandler Bings. Either that or it's music for the Patrick Batemans. But before you've worked out which one it is, you're hooked by the fun jingle-jangle of the opening track, Movin' Out, and it doesn't really matter either way. Then the piano from the title track kicks in and you recognise it as the sample from Xzibit's amazing 'At the Speed of Life' track 'The Foundation', and before you know it you've worked your way through the entire album to 'Everybody Has a Dream' and you've walked into a New York fashion outlet and bought an expensive navy cashmere overcoat of your very own. And when you leave that shop you're gunna have no choice but listen to The Stranger on your Walkman again as you hit the high street. Some people will look at you and see a Chandler Bing. Others will look at you and see a Patrick Bateman. But by this point you don't really care. You're living in some weird alternate early 90s white collar central park office block coffee shop wall street burst fire hydrant subway train American dream. Thanks a lot Billy Joel.

Just straight beautiful, catchy, well written songs

Every song is a stone cold hit. Short and sweet, leaves you wanting more.

I like where the first song goes "ACK, ACK, ACK, ACK, ACK".

Classic. I loved it, again.

Banger

The music and instrumentation in Billy's music is always fantastic, but his lyrical work and storytelling is a huge showstopper for me. "A bottle of red, a bottle of white/It all depends upon your appetite/I'll meet you any time you want/In our Italian Restaurant"? Come on, the only thing cheesier than that would be... Velveeta fondue. Things took a turn for the unsettling when I got around to actually listening to the lyrics of "Only The Good Die Young", and I honestly gave up on the album after that. Billy Joel is the straighter, less interesting, slightly creepy Elton John, and I'd honestly be perfectly fine never hearing a song of his agian.

I almost knocked a star off because of the saxophone solo but I couldn't do it. The storytelling on display here is top-notch. Joel's performances are flawless and his songwriting is compelling. Just a really great album stacked with songs that are full of all the feels.

Is it because you'd have to turn the dial in the car just right in order to get the right channel, so you just left it on something that played static free music and so you heard a lot of Billy Joel? Or is this really an album you want to be stranded on an island with?

Very fun! Many classics

Really good album, so used to hi greatest hits it was great to listen to the original album and get the added song flow. Loved it.

I'm a big fan of Billy Joel. This was my first introduction to Billy Joel when I was a child. Still embodies New York Romanticism to me. I love the balance of this album there's so many fun songs.

YESSSS UNCLE BILLY Literal excellence Favorites: Just The Way You Are Vienna She's Always A Woman Everybody Has A Dream

Pour la petite anecdote, Billy Joel avait écrit cet album en pensant le proposer à Michael Jackson. Ce dernier refusa et c'est finalement Shrek qui eut la chance de l'interpréter.

Money!

In the pantheon of adult contemporary singer-songwriters who meandered out of the 70s, Billy Joel sits somewhere in the middle with Springsteen. A touch better than the bland whiteness of Rod Stewart, John Mellencamp, and Bryan Adams, but no where near the quality of Warren Zevon or solo Paul Simon. It's not an awful album, but it shouldn't really be on a list of essential listening. This is an album to listen to while bonding with your aunt over herbal tea and zucchini bread while she busts out old 35mm pictures of bridges she took while on a bicycle tour of the US.

Classic Joel Scenes from an Italian good for long-form Pretty good shortforms/casuals

A couple of songs I was not familiar with, but the ones I know are some of my favourites.

moving owt lol this has all the best billy joel song imo hence this is the best billy joel album for me (so far)

A grand record! It turns out I know every song on this album from my childhood. It's an album about life, modernity, struggle, love, death, all of it. It has an everyman quality about it and the production is divine. Not one bad song on the record. I bought it just now!

This album forms almost a quarter of the tracks on his Greatest Hits collection (5 out of 21), but they're all good.

Holy toledo. This is an entire career on a single album. Pretty damn impressive.

grande billy joel do uptown girl

Loved it already!

Hell of an ear for a tune but the beat leaves a lot to be desired. As for his stories, simply not engaging, which has something to do with his treacly McCartney voice, and even more to do with hollowness plain and simple. Songs about nothing more than being songs.

too close to be impartial. If that's what it's all about... Billy, I love you just the way you are.

Bloody loved this album. What a singer and songwriter he is.

Loved it. Each song was like a story and I’ll definitely be listening multiple times.

bellisimo

This album promotes ear strengths- varied and catchy and I haven’t heard it all together before

Really quite good. Certified bangerlicious

Amazing and classic album.

top 2 by mister Joel

Great listen. Very familiar already but fun to hear all the hits.

Awesome mix of storytelling, pop piano, and Americana. I’d heard many of the songs on this album before but never listened to the entire thing in one sitting.

Great record…makes me wanna get wasted on Schlitz, hop in my sports car and crash it into my neighbors front yard in the Hamptons.

I love that the best songs on this album aren’t the singles. The Stranger has made its way onto my main playlist, and then the theme coming back in the last song? A vibe. Gotta listen to more of Billy Joel.

This is the album that put Billy on the map. I know, his early stuff has its moments, but this back with his follow up "52nd Street", were seminal works of this fame and success. Good job!

Aah ich ha da album eigentlich mega gern. Leider het mer de finnerty de billy joel bitz kaputt gmacht. Trotzdem immer no sehr gern, bsunders de song vienna losi sehr viel. Git e knapps füfi wel die letschte paar songs nüm soo guet sind aber gad guet gnueg

I listened to this record for an entire summer when I was 16 working as a janitor in a grade school. Whenever I hear "heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack" I get magically transported back to the roof of Cumberland Elementary where I'm smoking a joint and blasting Billy Joel on a cheap Rayovac boom box at 9 in the morning and I gotta say it's a pretty great god damn place to be.

Perfect! It is very energizing and melodious! I like this album.

He puts so much pizazz and flair into his music it’s so slay

Wow! Incredibly charming and stunning arrangements!

Thought I was listening to his greatest hits album because every song is a BANGER 5 ⭐️

Billy bangers

Hit after hit!!! Incredible stuff billy

It's been a while since I've listened to this album. Billy Joel is another artist that I nearly categorically adore. I like every tune on this album, but can understand why other people don't. Still, for me, it's 5 stars!

There is a dearth of truly memorable songs in today’s pop landscape, and this is an album full of them. The Stranger is a tight, beautifully produced collection of catchy, classic songs. It’s one of the great albums of its era and delightful to listen to, always. It’s impressive to me looking now how many hits reside on this album. Some of the songs have been overplayed in the past 40 years, but they also ended up being true classics. It’s hard to hear this album and not find a song you know very well. Joel's longevity is a testament to his singular talents as a singer and songwriter, as well as the universal likeability of this music. Admit it, it's also hard to listen to this album and not find yourself in a good mood. Fave songs: The Stranger, Vienna, I'm Movin' Out, Only the Good Die Young

I was already familiar with this one so it was great to have an excuse to put it on the new system at home. Anyone who doesn’t rate this album 5 stars is crazy.

Classic. Love every song. Five out of Five Stars. Favorite songs. Scene's From an Italian Restaurant, Vienna, The Stranger, Everybody Has a Dream and all the hits (Moving Out, Just the Way you are, Only the Good Die Young, She's Always a Woman).

5/5 - Super cool. Whoever said he was in between EJ and PmC was right - very nice vibe to it

Great album.

A great album start to finish! I didnt realise how many of Joel's greatest songs were on this album.

Best Songs: - Movin Out - Vienna Love the outro

Hit after hit, it's almost a cliche.

Great album

Amazing classic album! Fav tracks include Vienna, Movin’ Out, and Only the Good Die Young! However, each track was great and very enjoyable!

Great album front to back! Big fan

Absolute classic. Non stop hits. Love the key changes. Probably the best album in a brilliant career.

Classic

Every song is a stone cold hit. Short and sweet, leaves you wanting more.

One of best pop albums of the 70s, of all-time indeed. An inspired man at the peak of his powers.

Joel at the height of his songwriting powers. All the songs are gems and a few are absolute belters! First class.

WHO NEEDS A HOUSE OUT IN HACKENSACK? IS THAT ALL YOU GET FOR YOUR MONEY????? What a throwback! Movin’ Out in particular immediately pulls The Stranger into the upper echelon of albums for me. I used to listen to that song when driving to my high school in Hackensack. It was my battle cry “I’m getting out of here” song. The nostalgia!! Great album, love the sax and love the piano. The Stranger, Vienna, She’s Always a Woman, Everybody Has a Dream. Classic

No. 204/1001 Movin' Out 4/5 The Stranger 4/5 Just The Way You Are 4/5 Scenes from an Italian Restaurant 4/5 Vienna 5/5 Only The Good Die Young 4/5 She's Always A Woman 5/5 Get It Right The First Time 4/5 Everybody Has a Dream 4/5 Average: 4,22 Wow! This was really a great listen from front to back.

Funny how I knew several tracks on this. It must be a testament to BJ's genius as a songwriter. He's not my normal listening material, but this is very good. No Rock songs on here and I don't care! A 4 star album.

He's got such a great voice. Somewhere in between Paul McCartney and Elton John, but man some of those lyrics are so creepy. Even when he's trying to be nice comes off so condescending. I'll split the difference

The popular songcraft here is strong but the problem is that it doesn’t serve much of a purpose. If you took Paul McCartney at his schmaltziest, added some overproduced Paul Simon with all the substance trimmed away, and finished with a dash of Elton John glitz, this is what you’d get. He absolutely nailed what he was trying to make, it seems, but it’s all so flavorless I can’t imagine why you’d want to try it. Plus the second half really reveals a core of misogyny that poisons anything decent there.

Wow, all I see are 4 and 5 star ratings for this so I'll probably take flak for this. Someone already stole my line that he's a less interesting and cheesier version of Elton John and I fully concur. There's no doubt that he has a knack for writing catchy pop songs, but the shmaltz factor here is simply too high for me. He somewhat redeems himself with the less commercial songs like the Stranger and Get it right. But he knows his audience and and I guess he hits the nail right on the head with this album that is loaded with bestsellers.

This album is basically filled with every one of his radio hits save "Piano Man". Overall, was never a Billy Joel fan, and this just reconfirms that. Somewhat of an off-brand Elton John, who I'm also not a fan of.

I respect Billy Joel's songwriting chops. These are incredibly successful songs and have been played on radio a bazillion times, and I know most of this album backwards just from the ubiquitous nature of the thing. But it bores me to tears. Billy Joel is not rock and roll (despite Billy's later protestations); it's much more popular song based in the Broadway tradition. And it is very successful in that mold. But I don't really need it in my life. Sorry.

Schlock.

Billy Joel. The stranger in the bath, the finger in the anus. This man is so addicted to cheese that he goes to bed each night wearing pyjamas made entirely out of dairylea triangles.

Billy at his best

Excellent listened to then put straight back on

Forever a favorite

I feel like such a dweeb but I gotta give this album a 5 simply because it has “Vienna” and like 5 other all-time great songs. It’s just so good! Must listen #58

I owned this as a kid. One of my favorite albums ever. Played it so often. Nice to come back to it.

I did the thing where you sit on your headphones until they fall asleep so they feel like someone else's. Seemed right.

Hell yeah

This was such a good album!! Thoroughly enjoyed, it was a lot more up beat than I first thought it might be, super entertaining and will definitely listen to most of the songs regularly.

THIS IS A FUCKIN JAM.

This is a cheat for my first album as I was already a huge Billy Joel fan. :)

It's crazy to read his record label was considering dropping Billy Joel after his enormous success and subsequent let-downs. This album might have been the result of the enormous pressure he must have been under. Reshaping his intent to the rough diamond this album is. Billy Joel is a master of double edged, bittersweet lyrics, capturing the freedom and consequences of your own choices.

What a timeless album, nearly every song is a banger. Joel’s vocals are strong when they need to be and soft when they need to be. The music is catchy and wonderful! His songs compel you to listen and feel them, they’re beautiful. Fave Song: Vienna Least Fave Song: Get it Right the First Time Rating: 5/5

I wish I could give it a six / ten. So good.

Ho avuto i brividi all’ultimo brano.

Agree to disagree here, but this is one of the great albums of its era

Top shelf in every way. Songwriting vocals instrumentals production. This was the way, back before talent and musicianship was replaced with attitude and electronics.

This album was amazing. I never did a deep dive on Billy Joel before, I really only knew a handful of songs which I really liked and always wanted to check him out in depth at some point.

this album is amazing, through and through. it's filled with such a range of incredible songs. Kicking off with Movin' Out - an absolute kick to the face and such a stellar song. this album takes us on a journey, weaving us between stories of individuals wanting more, everyday scenes, reflections on love, and why dreaming is important. This album is truly special - in my most humble opinion and will definitely be in my vinyl collection.

Damn, I love Billy Joel. Upbeat and catchy. I actually hadn’t heard a lot of these songs, but every single one is good. There’s a common thread in the style, but there is still so much variety of tone and sound. Favorite which I knew before: Only the Good Die Young. Favorite which I didn’t know before: Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. Least Favorite: N/A

What an embarrassment of riches here. So many great jams on this album. What I always love about a Billy Joel album is it’s never too long in terms of song count. It’s always just like 8 or 9 songs which really is the way an album should be. Don’t give me half assed filler songs just to make an album longer. That kind of mindset about an album is likely why 6 of these 9 songs are easily recognizable of anyone who is not just a fan of Joel but of classic rock in general. Such a great variety of jams here and all with such unique features that make them easy to fall in love with. The ack ack ack bit of movin out, the distinct Rhodes electric piano on just the way you are, the middle interlude of Scenes, the beautiful piano riff of Vienna, the easy to sing and clap along chorus of only the good die young and the come down ballad of she’s always a woman. Just great songwriting. Theres such a special place for albums like this where you don’t need to be inspired by the lyrics or progress the genre forward but just having good fun music that you want to sing along to. Joel has always been a man of the people and, speaking for the people, thank you for what you’ve given us.

Only the good die young is one of the best songs that we’ve heard on the list and this is one of the best albums. I didn’t have the same background context that others did - I couldn’t name a Billy Joel song before listening. I did recognize most of the songs as I was listening through, though. One of the things I really appreciate about this album is the composition. You have some piano and then some whistling and some guitar. Each one is iconic on its own and I wouldn’t really associate them with one another, but they somehow all come together. Then you have an insanely catchy chorus to top it all off. I did give this album an additional listen. I did read everyone else’s reviews prior to reviewing it myself. I didn’t want your reviews to impact mine, but they definitely did. It made me reflect upon music and my relationship with it. A lot of the music I truly love is built upon the people and the memories that I associate that music with. From Marley to Blink to AVPM, I have distinct pictures in my mind of when I fell in love with that music and who I was with when it happened. Reading about everyone’s personal memories with the album made me project those memories onto it as I listened. Now I get to kind of share in those memories too. I would love to stiff arm the album with a 4 and be contrarian, but it doesn’t deserve that treatment. Earnest, beautiful, and a bit corny at times, 5 stars.

I can vividly remember my first real introduction to Billy Joel, not counting the absolute banger that is Why Should I Worry? from Oliver and Company, of course. I was around 10 years old, out running errands with my mom on a Saturday morning. We stopped at the tiny strip mall on Hendersonville Road for lunch (for those of you from Asheville, the one near Asiana with the post office and Amish furniture store). We ordered pizza at some place that isn’t there anymore and then went to look at CDs in a second hand record store, also not there anymore. I probably wanted some boy band CD, but all we left with was The Essential Billy Joel, and from then on I probably played his greatest hits hundreds of times over. Obviously, there’s a handful of songs from this album in the compilation, but even the b-sides have that classic charm that embrace you like an old friend. I haven’t really ever gone through his albums individually, at least not in a couple decades, so I’m really excited to see what other albums of his make the list. Listened to this one twice in one day, I think that’s clearly grounds for a five.

When I first got into record collecting everyone my parents age was always eager to give me their old records and talk about the ones they loved. My father-in-law had a large collection at one point, but it had slowly dwindled down to just a handful by the time he was giving them to me. In that small handful was The Stranger by Billy Joel. He told me about how much he loved it, and how he always made his daughters listen to it. He was one of eight kids in a large Italian family, and this record just spoke to him. Obviously I knew Billy Joel's big hits, and some of them were on here, but I had never listened to a full album before. I was amazed at how great it was! I loved every bit of it, and recognized more than I thought I would. I knew it was a great album, but I hadn't even experienced the best part yet. We hosted Easter at our house a couple of months after he gave me that record. My wife's family tradition is always making homemade sauce, meatballs, and cavatelli pasta on Easter. Knowing how much this record ment to him, I put it on for my father-in-law while everyone was cooking. I will forever have the core memory in my head of seeing my wife, her dad, and both of her sisters making homemade pasta and singing along to this album. Two generations, a parent and a child, bonding over recipes that had been passed down from their relatives. Listen to songs that they will be pass down to theirs. It was a beautiful moment to witness and learn that something as small as a song can help pass on memories and emotions that span generations. Their family slowly sees less of each other as time goes on, but they always know that they will be together on Easter making pasta and singing "Only The Good Die Young". I can't wait to listen to this album and make homemade pasta with my daughter.

One of the great singer-songwriter records in pop rock, hooks and catchy melodies aplenty. 9/10

this is literally the music I listened to growing up.