Billy JoelBest Billy Joel Albums Ranked

The Stranger

pitchfork

8.5

“Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we revisit Billy Joel’s greatest album, a sublimely crafted breakthrough that finds the meeting ground of the romantic and the mundane.”

The Stranger

rollingstone

8.0

“In 1977, Joel’s fifth and best album replaced Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water as Columbia Records’ top seller to date, establishing Joel as a titan of adult contemporary — America’s answer to Elton John. The Stranger also marked the beginning of Joel’s long-term collaboration with producer Phil Ramone, who distilled the Piano Man’s […]”

Storm Front

rollingstone

8.0

“On Storm Front, his first studio album since The Bridge in 1986, Billy Joel throws off pop complacency for an angry, committed — and often moving — exploration of life in modern America. Defining the album’s theme of lost innocence is a core of songs that evokes the desperate disorientation that has suffused American consciousness […]”

An Innocent Man

rollingstone

8.0

“I don’t care what consequence it brings," sings Billy Joel in "The Longest Time," an acapella number from his soul music tribute album, An Innocent Man. "I have been a fool for lesser things." Well, yes. One need only think back to the brattish pedantry he pawned off as rock sensibility on Glass Houses, an […]”

The Nylon Curtain

rollingstone

8.0

“"Goodnight Saigon," the turning point of Billy Joel’s ambitious new album, may well be remembered as the ultimate pop-music epitaph to the Vietnam War. Into a pastoral soundscape a sputtering helicopter ominously steals, followed by martially elegiac piano chords and, finally, by Billy Joel’s tight, wound-up voice, higher and tenser than usual: "We met as […]”

Songs In the Attic (Live)

rollingstone

8.0

“Just as veteran rock & roller Bob Seger once attempted (successfully) to add a crisp new edge and some fiery freshness to a chunk of his time-honored repertoire with 1976’s Live Bullet, so Billy Joel has brought forth a number of dusty gems from his less-heralded years (1971-1976) and given them an appealing live showcase […]”