The Billy Joel Catalog, Dispatch #7

Album: ‘Glass Houses‘
Year: 1980

By the time the 1980s came around, Billy finally decided to make a rock and roll record like–and this is just me talking–he always really wanted to. If you ever see concert footage of Billy, especially when he was younger, he really conducted himself like a rock star on stage. He is very in-your-face and very energetic on stage, so it shouldn’t have surprised anyone who was paying attention that this album was coming. This was more an eventuality than an experiment.

And boy, did it deliver! “You May Be Right” might be one of my favorite rock songs of all time and, if you’re ever riding in a car with me, listening to music, and that glass break sound happens, you had better bucking the fuck in and hold on because I’m going to belt out every lyric of that song off-key and at about 110 decibels. Nick can attest to this as he has seen that and a very infamous karaoke version, too. But, like ’52nd Street,’ the first side slaps while the second side wains with too many songs about the emptiness of a lonely life and not enough rock. Regardless, the first side makes the record and that’s fine by me. They all can’t be winners.

Let’s hear it from the man himself! I, too, don’t know what the fuck to do with my hands most of the time.

Track of Distinction: The back-and-forth style of “Still Rock and Roll to Me” and talking to that hipster devil on your shoulder still strikes me as great because, as a concept, it shouldn’t work, but it really does.