Billy Joel — The Stranger

The opening track introduces Anthony, a grocery-store worker from Long Island whose family pressures him to move out and make something of himself, and the song works because Joel grounds the character in specific details rather than broad strokes. The melody is a rewrite—Joel originally borrowed the tune from Neil Sedaka's Laughter in the Rain without realizing it until drummer Liberty DeVitto pointed it out the next day—and the new version has a better groove, with the rhythm section driving the track forward. The vocal sits in Joel's comfortable range, and the lyric captures the tension between ambition and settling without overplaying the drama. The sequencing choice to open with this track rather than a ballad sets the tone for an album that leads with energy.

Joel wrote the title track without a fixed theme, leaving it open to interpretation, though he suggested it could be about a man dealing with schizophrenia. The signature whistled hook was a placeholder that producer Phil Ramone convinced Joel to keep, and the decision gives the track an identity that a keyboard or guitar line would have missed. The percussion comes from an Ace Tone drum machine Joel was experimenting with, and the rhythm provides a foundation for the track's uneasy mood. The lyric is vague enough to support multiple readings, and the arrangement leaves space for the vocal to carry the weight. The track benefits from its placement early in the sequence, before the album settles into its ballad section.

The biggest hit on the album is also the one Joel wanted to cut, dismissing it as too sentimental for a record that otherwise avoided easy sentiment. Ramone disagreed and brought Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow into the studio to hear it; both praised the song, and Joel relented. The melody, which Joel claimed came to him in a dream, builds carefully across the verse, and the lyric avoids the clichés that sink most love songs by focusing on specific details rather than grand declarations. The performance is polished, with Phil Woods on alto saxophone adding texture without overwhelming the vocal, and the production is clean in a way that helped the song become a staple of adult-contemporary radio. The track won Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the Grammys, and while it is not the most adventurous song on the album, the craft in the verse construction and the restraint in the arrangement make it more than a formula ballad. It has aged better than most hits from the same era, which is more than can be said for the other wife ballad on side two.

The seven-and-a-half-minute centerpiece is three separate songs stitched together—The Italian Restaurant Song, Things Are OK in Oyster Bay, and The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie—and the seams show, but the ambition and the execution justify the length. Joel borrowed the structure from Abbey Road and Bohemian Rhapsody, but the subject matter is his own: a Long Island couple named Brenda and Eddie who get married young, peak in high school, and fall apart as adults. The first section sets the scene in an Italian restaurant, with Joel and an old friend catching up over a bottle of red and a bottle of white, and the melody is warm and conversational. The second section shifts into a faster groove, with the rhythm section holding a steady tempo as the lyric sketches the couple's rise. The third section, the ballad, is where the song earns its reputation, with the melody turning melancholy as Brenda and Eddie's marriage collapses. Ramone's orchestration ties the sections together, and the band navigates the transitions without losing momentum. The track is the best thing Joel ever recorded because it proves he could build a song past the radio edit and make the structure feel necessary rather than indulgent. It remains a staple of his live set, and Joel has said he cannot imagine doing a show without it.

The second-side opener is the most patient song on the album, building slowly around a piano figure and a lyric inspired by a trip Joel took to visit his father in Austria. The song's thesis—slow down, you're doing fine, Vienna waits for you—came from a conversation Joel had with his father about an elderly woman sweeping the streets. Joel pitied her, but his father explained that she was giving herself purpose by doing work that helped everyone, a revelation that shifted Joel's perspective on ambition and aging. The arrangement is spare, with accordion and strings adding color without crowding the vocal, and the melody unfolds across the verse in a way that rewards patience. The production lets the song breathe, and the result is one of Joel's most enduring tracks. When Joel lets his audience choose between Vienna and Just the Way You Are during live shows, Vienna wins more often, which says something about which song has staying power. The track was featured in an episode of the television series Taxi and later in the film 13 Going on 30, and Joel has cited it as his fifth-favorite song he has written.

The most propulsive track on the album started as a slower reggae tune, with Joel singing in a Jamaican accent, until drummer Liberty DeVitto told him to stop. Ramone suggested a shuffle beat over a straight-four rhythm, an odd combination that Joel initially found clunky but grew to appreciate, and the final arrangement turns the track into a rush. The lyric is sung from the perspective of a boy trying to seduce an abstinent Catholic woman named Virginia, inspired by a girl Joel had a crush on in high school, and the verse is specific enough to avoid sounding like a generic come-on. The song sold poorly as a single until Catholic groups began calling for radio bans, at which point the controversy turned it into a hit, peaking at number twenty-four. The track benefits from its placement between Vienna and the wife ballads, providing energy in a section of the album that otherwise leans reflective. Hugh McCracken's guitar work, brought in by Ramone, adds texture without overwhelming the rhythm section.

The second wife ballad, written about Elizabeth Weber, tries for a Gordon Lightfoot tone and ends up closer to soft-rock formula. Joel described the song as a commentary on women in business being persecuted, but the lyric reads more like a catalog of contradictions—she can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes—that borders on condescension. The melody is pleasant, and the vocal performance is smooth, but the song lacks the specific details that make Just the Way You Are work, and the arrangement is safe in a way that makes the track feel like filler. It became a hit anyway, peaking at number seventeen, which says more about what the market wanted from Joel in 1977 than what he was capable of writing. The track has aged poorly compared to the rest of the album.

A groove piece about the importance of making a good first impression, the track never develops past its premise. The rhythm section is solid, and the arrangement has space for the vocal to move, but the lyric repeats the same idea without adding new information, and the song feels like Joel filling out the album's runtime. It is the weakest track on the second side, and its placement between the two wife ballads makes the sag more noticeable.

The closing track is a gospel-influenced piece that runs over six minutes without earning the length. The lyric is earnest—everybody has a dream, everybody has a goal—but the melody does not develop enough to justify the runtime, and the arrangement, which features backing vocals from Phoebe Snow, Lani Groves, Gwen Guthrie, and Patti Austin, leans toward uplift without the specificity that makes the rest of the album compelling. The track redeems itself slightly with the reprise of the whistled theme from The Stranger, which ties the album together and provides a sense of closure. Without that reprise, the song would be pure filler.