Chart performance can be a fickle thing, and no album exemplifies this unreliability quite like Billy Joel’s The Stranger. Released on September 29, 1977, Joel’s fifth album was by far his most commercially successful record. However, we’d argue that the album’s best songs didn’t get the recognition they deserved.
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We’re here to change that.
“Vienna”
Billy Joel placed “Vienna” right in the middle of his nine-track album, and indeed, it does feel like a turning point in the record. After seeing how Venetian people treated their older population, Joel wrote this heartwarming ballad about not rushing into life too quickly. The song argues there’s more to life than your 20s. “Slow down, you crazy child. You’re so ambitious for a juvenile. But then if you’re so smart, tell me, why are you still so afraid?”
Billy Joel’s fifth track from The Stranger speaks to a fact of life we tend to forget, which is that even “grown-ups” still feel like kids more often than not. No one has it figured out the way we assume they might, even if they’re twenty years our senior. Despite its universal appeal, Joel never released it as an album single.
“Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)”
With its infectious beat and earworm-y, echoing delivery of “Cadillac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac” and “heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack”, it’s unsurprising that Joel chose “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” as the lead single from his 1977 album, The Stranger. The track is catchy, sure, but it’s also an impressive testament to Joel’s ability to paint ornate pictures of the average, everyday person.
The song performed relatively well as a single, peaking at No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. Still, for as poignant and memorable as this song is, one would think it could have at least broken into the top ten. We can only assume it’s because the public was more receptive to hits like The Emotions’ “Best of My Love” and Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)”, pushing Joel’s song out of its well-deserved spot.
“The Stranger”
Despite being the album’s title track, Billy Joel opted not to release “The Stranger” as a single in the U.S. or the U.K. The song still performed well elsewhere, peaking at No. 2 in Japan, No. 8 in New Zealand, and No. 59 in Australia and France. The title track opens with Joel whistling and playing the piano before the rest of the band comes in with a funky rock groove.
For American and British audiences, “Just the Way You Are” would be the final single from Joel’s fifth album. While the song, which Joel wrote about his then-wife, Elizabeth Weber, is good, we’d argue that “The Stranger” was a little bit better. Perhaps it was easier to digest the idea of loving someone despite their flaws than it was the idea that no one ever really knows the real “you.”
“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”
Closing out our list of the best songs from Billy Joel’s The Stranger is another masterclass in scene-setting: “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”. Despite the fact that Joel never released the song as a single in any country, the public quickly latched onto the A-side closer of his fifth album. Beatles-esque in its ability to transition from one musical idea to the next, the over-seven-minute song is Joel’s longest studio track. It surpassed Joel’s “Piano Man” by almost two minutes, which was famously trimmed down to be more radio-friendly four years earlier, in 1973.
“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” has gotten its due credit since then, with Rolling Stone Australia ranking it among the greatest songs of all time in 2021.
Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images
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