Billy joel 52nd street rar

My Life — Zanzibar — Stiletto — Half A Mile Away — Until The Night — You May Be Right — Sometimes A Fantasy — All For Leyna — Sleeping With The Television On — Close To The Borderline — Through The Long Night — Streetlife Serenader — Los Angelenos — Everybody Loves You Now — Allentown — Laura — Pressure — Goodnight Saigon — A Room Of Our Own — Surprises — Scandinavian Skies — Easy Money — An Innocent Man — The Longest Time — This Night — Tell Her About It — Uptown Girl — If anything, being classified as a mainstream rocker — a soft rocker — infuriated him, especially since a generation of punks and new wave kids were getting the praise that eluded him.

Comparatively a harder-rocking album than either of its predecessors, with a distinctly bitter edge, Glass Houses still displays the hallmarks of Billy Joel the pop craftsman and Phil Ramone the world-class hitmaker. It may not be punk — then again, it may be his concept of punk — but Glass Houses is the closest Joel ever got to a pure rock album. Having scored three multi-platinum hits in a row, Billy Joel took a breather, releasing his first live album, Songs in the Attic, as he worked on his ambitious follow-up to Glass Houses.

Joel wisely decided to use the live album as an opportunity to draw attention to songs from his first four albums. Furthermore, he now had a seasoned backing band that helped give his music a specific identity — in short, it was an opportunity to reclaim these songs, now that he had a signature sound.

With the possible exception of the Turnstiles material, every song is given a fuller, better arrangement that makes it all spring to life. Billy Joel hit back as hard as he could with Glass Houses, his bid to prove that he could rock as hard as any of those new wave punks. Since this was an album about Baby Boomers, he chose to base his music almost entirely on the Beatles, the pivotal rock band for his generation. Joel is naturally inclined to write big melodies like McCartney, but he idolizes Lennon, which makes The Nylon Curtain a fascinating cross between ear candy and social commentary.

His desire to record a grand concept album is admirable, but his ever-present lyrical shortcomings mean that the songs paint a picture without arriving at any insights.

Since he labored so hard at the record, he decided it was time for a break — it was time to record an album just for fun. Riding high on the blockbuster An Innocent Man and with a new jet-setting bride at his side, Billy Joel took full advantage of the high life, as is clear from The Bridge, an album that unwittingly celebrates the excesses of the Reagan years. When he went for a masterpiece on The Nylon Curtain, Billy Joel worked with his band and producer Phil Ramone, crafting a Beatlesque song suite that was perfectly in step with Turnstiles.

For Storm Front, he decided it was time to change things. He fired Ramone. He fired everyone in his band, save longtime drummer Liberty DeVito. He was left with an album that is singularly joyless.

Billy Joel had never taken as much time to record an album as he did with River of Dreams, and its troubled birth is clear upon the first listen. Never before had he recorded an album that sounded so labored, as if it was a struggle for him to write and record the songs. Joel succeeds because he kept his ambitions reasonable and was smart about presentation.

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