Only ten left to go!
Jumping forward from Minternational's last one, we get really up to date and trendy - all the way to 1982.
The big problem for Billy Joel in the UK is that he only had one massively successful album really: Innocent Man which was in a sense a 'concept album': a tribute to the music he grew up with in the 1960s. But this one big exposure made most people assume he was a latter day rock 'n' roll wannabe. This pigeonholed him and completely missed the point of what he did - piano based lyric-driven pieces.
I'm not sure which, if any, of his albums would make my list, but the number of individual songs that could be picked is huge, and selecting one is difficult. I've gone for Allentown because it kind of covers several aspects of his work: melodic, lyrical and with a point (mass unemployment in the early 80s).
LastFM
Spotify
I almost chose one which was not a big hit and probably remains an invisible album track:
Vienna
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1 comment:
Well, I applaud your choice - heartily. And I agree that any number of BJ songs could have been chosen - I have a real liking for Goodnight Saigon off The Nylon Curtain and loads of other albums have plenty of great material. My first intro to him was my brother bringing home some albums when on leave from the Army, among them The Stranger and Glass Houses (so I guess we're talking c.1979. I often find myself singing Vienna, funnily enough...
He really has a gift for lyrics, although not all critics are agreed on that (but what do they know, eh!). Thanks muchly for this choice, it's spot on.
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