Billy Joel, “The Stranger”

Tom Heerman:

Ah. Ha ha ha. Billy Joel in the Top 70 of all time. I suppose it’s appropriate, but I could go on the rest of my life without ever hearing this record again. So to me, that tips the scale badly. Sure, I had a “Joel Phase” as some noob once said to me at a party. [I had to do a quick soul search to see if I had indeed had a Joel Phase, which in fact, I did. I was young and naive.] I thought he was pretty cool for a titch. This was actually before The Stranger came out. So I was diggin’ “Streetlife Serenade” and “Piano Man.” And back then we actually had to pull a record out of a sleeve, dust it off, and place it on a turntable. Sometimes even clean fuzz off the needle. We had to work a little for music, and I remember working for Billy Joel. Examining the 12-inchers. Blowing the lint off ’em. Reading the lyric sheet… But when The Stranger came out, he had become huge. He had hits, and babes, and more hits. He was getting his just desserts. And of course, I could no longer like him. I am a music snob. But today, after many years, I listen to Billy Joel with somewhat fresh ears. I am hoping he can re-establish in me a modicum of coolness. What follows is my impression and rating.

Chris McJaggerly:

The Stranger is a tuneful record with some nice turns on the piano. The love songs are great. But Billy Joel should have stuck to tuneful love songs. He has no idea how to rock; when he tries to sound tough he just sounds phony (“I run with a dangerous crowd, we ain’t too pretty, we ain’t too proud, we might be laughing a bit too loud, but that never hurt no one.”). The motorcycle sounds on “Movin’ Out” make me cringe. Joel also falls flat when he searches for meaning – as in the dumb title track, “The Stranger.”

Even worse is “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” which I officially nominate as Worst Song on a Rolling Stone Top 100 album. When The Stranger came out, Bruce Springsteen was singing mini-rock operas about blue color kids transitioning to adulthood. Like “Italian Restaurant,” Springsteen’s songs were backed by piano and wailing saxophone, and filled with clichéd lyrics. But Bruce was inspiring. The characters in his songs had full hearts, wanted to escape their dead-end hometowns, and were taking a shot at redemption. By contrast, “Italian Restaurant” is utterly uninspiring. Here’s a telling moment: Joel sings about Brenda and Eddie, the popular couple from high school mired in a bad marriage, buying shag carpet and a couple of paintings from Sears, and then screams “Let’s rock and roll!” Compare that to Springsteen’s line before the climax in “Born To Run” — “I wanna die with you Wendy on the street tonight in an everlasting kiss!” Memo to Billy: a lyric about an unhappy married couple buying crap at a department store does not launch your audience into the musical stratosphere.

I give The Stranger a 26.

Tom Heerman:

My impression: not that great.

Here is my challenge to you: Can you perform the whistle part on “The Stranger” right now, without going to the record and playing it? I can. I suspect everyone who is over 40 years old can do this. It wasn’t even released as a single! That is something that probably qualifies the album as a “fabric of our lives” piece of history. Too bad so many of those ingrained cultural things are lame and regrettable, unless we are drunk at a party, and start reminiscing about the old days and saying “I love everybody, more shots!” So here is my backhanded compliment for Billy Joel: You have written songs that everyone knows.

As for the record, it’s got two classic love songs, which will be in wedding parties and Hallmark ads for eternity. They are really quite amazing, if you like that kind of thing. Also, I always thought Billy Joel had a great array of vocal talents, which give each song an added variable to go with his skills at a keyboard, which are obvious.

The negative comments are basically two things. First, he sounds like a carnival (to quote Billy Joel), which ain’t rock’n’roll to me (to quote Billy Joel). Secondly, his lyrics are just a bit too obvious. It might be because they are so familiar to us, but I really prefer lyrics that need interpretation. His words just are not unclear enough for classic rock status. It’s a fine line, and he misses it.

Rating: 26.

Connor Johnson:

I like Billy Joel. When I was like 12 I got The Essential Billy Joel in my stocking at Christmas. At 12, it was essential. I had it in my zip-up CD case for years. Is it still essential? No, but I wish I knew where that zip-up CD case was. I had some good shit in there.

Billy Joel is what most Millennials would describe as “basic.” It’s a term used to describe girls who are a little too into pumpkin-spiced anything or dudes who are a little too into the Foo Fighters. Basic is plain. It’s not necessarily bad, just lacking in personality, individuality, depth, etc.

The Stranger is basic. It’s basic-Elton John, basic-piano-playing-Jackson Browne, basic-prog rock, and definitely basic-singer songwriter. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. There are a lot of good songs on the album. A lot. Side A is a hit machine, it’s incredibly listenable and it’s a major crowd-pleaser when everyone’s on beer #6 on a Saturday afternoon. But it’s basic.

The guitar riff in the title track is dope, but the whistling is a little indulgent and definitely didn’t warrant a reprise at the end of the song. “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” is fun as hell and a showcase of the dude’s songwriting ability and musicality, and I have to imagine it’s pretty fun to see that song live, but at the same time it’s basic as hell — lame lyrics, cheesy transitions between sections, etc. That said it’s one of those weird songs that’s at once undeniably basic and universally enjoyed. If that song comes on at the bar and you’re a few beers deep, you will undoubtedly play the air-piano (which is also basic; every air-instrument is basic, especially the air-guitar) and you’ll also sing along. The love songs are great too, can’t forget to mention that. “Just The Way You Are” and “She’s Always a Woman” are indisputably great songs. But the album is basic.

Billy Joel makes everyone basic because everyone enjoys his songs; enjoying a Billy Joel song is inherently basic.* It’s his most endearing quality though. Billy Joel is the personification of that moment when you hear a song on the radio and you’re like “Who is this? This is pretty good,” and then the DJ comes on and says, “And that was the latest single from Taylor Swift.” It’s basic to like Billy Joel, but it’s ok because everyone likes Billy Joel. And if anyone claims to not like Billy Joel, they’re a liar, and that’s worse than being basic. So when a Billy Joel song comes on, you can take great comfort in knowing that everyone around you is being basic with you. Being basic isn’t so bad when you’re not being basic alone.

Every time I listen to this album, I’m amazed at how many hits there are. It’s constant, almost overwhelming. And when the mood is right, listening to this album is like watching crowd-shots in a live Paul McCartney DVD… every time a song starts there’s a shot of an older man throwing his hands in the air like, “Are you serious, another hit?!” It’s cute. But hits don’t make a great album, and while this album is fun as hell, it’s definitely not a great album. That said, I own it on vinyl and listen to Side A probably once every 6 weeks, so who am I to judge?

It’s a great party album, but it’s not a 100-greatest-albums-of-all-time sort of album. I can understand and appreciate why Rolling Stone put it on their list, but it definitely doesn’t belong there. It’s too basic. But it’s so fun that it makes everyone else basic, and for that we should all appreciate it. Because The Stranger is pumpkin-spiced everything, and sometimes pumpkin spice is pretty tasty.

This one gets a 26 from me.

*The only time it isn’t basic to like Billy Joel is when “Piano Man” is played at the end of a wedding reception and you get to see drunk older family members sing their hearts out, because that’s the best ever.