The Stranger

1	Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) 3:30
2	The Stranger 5:10
3	Just the Way You Are 4:50
4	Scenes from an Italian Restaurant 7:37
5	Vienna 3:34
6	Only the Good Die Young 3:55
7	She's Always a Woman 3:21
8	Get It Right the First Time 3:57
9	Everybody Has a Dream 9:08

Barnes & Noble

With his first hit, "Piano Man," Billy Joel came across like fellow Long Islander Harry Chapin, an earnest storyteller whose tales were more interesting than his tunes. But subsequent albums proved that Joel was gaining sophistication and subtlety. By the time he released The Stranger, in 1977, Joel had really hit his stride: He was rocking harder, had loads of smart-ass personality, could rhyme "cadillac" with "Hackensack," and, perhaps more important, was willing to do it. Bruce Springsteen had become the Boss by then, and his Born to Run slices of street life were the standard to which everyone else's work was compared. Joel didn't sport a blue collar, but the humorously frustrated characters he created in songs like "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" and "Only the Good Die Young" were more familiar to a mass audience than Bruce's car jockeys and small-time hoods, and the public responded enthusiastically. Joel's sentimental side also struck a chord with listeners, as evidenced by the success of the ballads "Just the Way You Are" and "She's Always a Woman," which stand as two of Joel's finest. Michael Hill

All Music Guide

Billy Joel teamed with Phil Ramone, a famed engineer who had just scored his first producing hits with Art Garfunkel's Breakaway and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years for The Stranger, his follow-up to Turnstiles. Joel still favored big, sweeping melodies, but Ramone convinced him to streamline his arrangements and clean up the production. The results aren't necessarily revelatory, since he covered so much ground on Turnstiles, but the commercialism of The Stranger is a bit of a surprise. None of his ballads have been as sweet or slick as "Just the Way You Are"; he never had created a rocker as bouncy or infectious as "Only the Good Die Young"; and the glossy production of "She's Always a Woman" disguises its latent misogynist streak. Joel balanced such radio-ready material with a series of New York vignettes, seemingly inspired by Springsteen's working-class fables and clearly intended to be the artistic centerpieces of the album. They do provide The Stranger with the feel of a concept album, yet there is no true thematic connection between the pieces, and his lyrics are often vague or mean-spirited. His lyrical shortcomings are overshadowed by his musical strengths. Even if his melodies sound more Broadway than Beatles -- the epic suite "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" feels like a show-stopping closer -- there's no denying that the melodies of each song on The Stranger are memorable, so much so that they strengthen the weaker portions of the album. Joel rarely wrote a set of songs better than those on The Stranger, nor did he often deliver an album as consistently listenable. Stephen Thomas Erlewine