In praise of Billy Joel

PIANO FAN Billy Joel plays at New York's Shea Stadium. Admit it. You love "Tell Her About It" (Photo: Getty Images)

But with a lavish reissue of his 1977 album, The Stranger, and a defensively fawning Times profile serving as a prelude to this week's pair of shows at Shea Stadium, one wonders if it isn't the right time to look at Joel's body of work as more than "okay if you're stuck in a traffic jam on the LIE."

Sure, there's no excusing the Peter Gabriel-gone-dorm-room excess of "River Of Dreams," or the superficial boomer gloss given to history by "We Didn't Start the Fire." But Joel has spun a few songs that even the most hardened rock critic can probably admit to enjoying.

Following are 10 of them worth revisiting, if only for the purpose of preparing for Joel's perhaps inevitable Rick Rubin–produced, Britt Daniel–assisted "comeback" album.

Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway), 1976
The Springsteen model, only tweaked, turned up, and transformed into a fairy tale of post-apocalyptic New York. (Although on Wednesday night at Shea Stadium, Joel almost sunk the whole thing by awkwardly sticking in a lyric about the Mets—for the purposes of parity, since there's a line that uses the word "Yankees" in a semifavorable way.)

Movin' Out, 1977
This song provided the backdrop for Joel's Twyla Tharp–assisted jukebox musical, and its "ack-ack-ack" chorus can get even the most hardened member of the anti-Billy chorus singing along. (Okay, it might take a beer or two.)

The suburban ennui bubbling underneath, the portrait of the cop who has to take shifts at a bar in order to afford a fancy car—it wasn't "Anarchy in the UK" by a long stretch, but the rejection of the country-life dream by one of the Island's own was a significant chip in the facade of its suburban idyll.

My Life, 1978
Lyrically, "My Life" reads like a slightly defensive letter home after the nest-escape of "Movin' Out," a high school yearbook–worthy message that's only helped by its straighter-than-straight-arrow musical bed.

NB: The truncated version used as the opening for the Tom Hanks/Peter Scolari cross-dressing sitcom Bosom Buddies, while voiced by a Joel impersonator, best distills the song down to its essence.

Big Shot, 1978
The B-side to "My Life," this shot at a woman who walks around town high on herself (and a little bit of cocaine) is quintessentially Long Island, with its overenunciated class consciousness (limos, Park Avenue references, "your Halston dress") and herky-jerky piano.

It's probably the song of Joel's that's most ripe for a 2008 makeover, especially since only about two lyrical details would need to be changed. (Thankfully, "Kitson" and "Halston" both scan similarly.)

You May Be Right, 1980
Glass Houses has been called Joel's answer to the new wave encroachment of the Jam, the Cars, and Elvis Costello, and the album opener certainly delivers, sounding like an arena-rock kid's first foray into covering the Stiff catalog, all the way down to the just-too-long outro.

All for Leyna, 1980
If nothing else, the intro to this taut track about a one-night stand—also from Glass Houses—anticipated Bon Jovi's "Runaway" by three years.

Pressure, 1982
It's hard not to think that this is one of Joel's finer moments, if only for the way it channels the piano man's keyboard prowess into a twitching synth line.

The naked anxiety about middlebrow intellectualism—"all your life is channel 13," "all your life is Time magazine"—probably kept it from reaching "Screamer of the Week" status on his home island's alt-radio outpost WLIR as much as his pedigree did.

Tell Her About It, 1983
An Innocent Man was released just as American culture began wrapping itself in the security blanket of the late '50s and early '60s, and the album's naked homages to James Brown, Ben E. King, and doo-wop were lapped up by listeners who spent the rest of their waking moments wishing the Beatles would show up in prime time again and lamenting the days when kids were breaking into four-part harmony on every street corner in the country.

"Tell Her About It" is Man's Motown homage and no doubt its most successful tribute, although it works a lot better as a pop song if you avoid the video, which, like so many other promo clips of its era, goes the "remember Ed Sullivan? Gosh, those were the days" route.

A Matter of Trust, 1986
In stark contrast, the clip for "A Matter of Trust" is fantastic, if only as a snapshot of what St. Marks Place looked like before Chipotle arrived. Like "Tell Her About It," Joel's vocal performance here is gruffly exuberant, and the stripped-for-its-time sound of the track, dragged along by a bloozy guitar sound that's so clean it squeaks, only amplifies that fact.

I Go to Extremes, 1989
A slightly restrained comedown after "A Matter of Trust," which may be deliberate irony, given the title—and, like much of his body of work, it could be snipped by about 1:30 and probably pack a better punch. But it's probably the pinnacle of the undoubtedly weaker material he put out between The Bridge and his final studio album, 1993's River Of Dreams.