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.

Nylon Curtain was a bit of a slump, sales-wise, selling “only” 2 million copies in the U.S. One of the real surprises for me in researching these songs for the Billy Joel theme is exactly how commercially successful he remained throughout his career. With the exception of the ill-fated Cold Spring Harbor, every single one of Joel’s albums has gone platinum. Of the eleven post-Harbor albums, all but two have gone at least four times platinum. Artists today would kill for that sort of consistency. (It’s weird to talk about Joel’s recording career in the past tense, but it’s been 16 years since he last put out an album!)

Continue reading →