1986’s The Bridge was Billy Joel’s last great album and my fifth favorite of his albums (I’ll let you guess the other four). It contains only nine songs but they’re uniformly strong. The one minor exception is the rather maudlin ‘This is the Time,’ which probably wasn’t written for a high school prom but may as well have been.
The album features a few high-profile collaborations, including a wonderful duet with Ray Charles on ‘Baby Grand.’ I remember when I first heard that song I remarked that Joel sounded like Ray Charles on the first verse and was shocked when the actual Ray Charles jumped in on the second.
Joel followed up Nylon Curtain with one of his best-selling albums, the 50s flavored An Innocent Man. This is one of his slightest albums, most likely by design. The doo-wop ear candy of ‘The Longest Time’ and the cornball ‘Uptown Girl’ are about an inch deep, inspired by similar songs Joel loved as a kid.
The Nylon Curtain is one of Billy Joel’s most ambitious albums, and one of his best. Two years after the major success of the expectation-defying Glass Houses, Joel changed things up again, paying more attention than ever to the production values of his work and crafting an homage to his childhood heroes The Beatles.
Glass Houses, at the time, was a real kick in the ass for Billy Joel fans. The jazz touches and piano balladry of his earlier work was pushed aside for straight-up rock-n-roll. If there’s any piano on this album at all, it’s buried under layers of electric guitar, synths and heavy drums.
Billy Joel followed up The Stranger with an album just as strong if not as iconic, 52nd Street. This jazzy collection boasts such hits as ‘Big Shot,’ ‘Honesty’ and ‘My Life’ but it’s the other, lesser-known tracks that make it one of Joel’s finest efforts. ‘Zanzibar,’ ‘Stiletto,’ ‘Rosalinda’s Eyes,’ ‘Half a Mile Away,’ ‘Until the Night’ and the title track, which (in order) finish off the album after the first three hit tracks, are among the best songs Joel has ever written.
Meet Me In Montauk 