Billy Joel’s The Stranger released

The Stranger Billy Joel

Released: September 29, 1977 Peak: 2 US, 24 UK, 2 CN, 2 AU, 15 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 12.0 US, 0.10 UK, 15.0 world (includes US and UK), 26.77 EAS Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Click on a song titled for more details. Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) [3:30] The Stranger [5:10] Just the Way You Are [4:50] Scenes from an Italian Restaurant Vienna [3:34] Only the Good Die Young [3:55] She’s Always a Woman [3:21] Get It Right the First Time [3:57] Everybody Has a Dream [6:38] Total Running Time: 42:34

Rating: 4.429 out of 5.00 (average of 29 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

The Early Years Born in New York City in 1949, Billy Joel rose to fame in the 1970s as one of the most successful singer/songwriter/pianists of all time. He started taking piano lessons at a young age and was already recording music with a band, the Echoes, by the age of 16. He dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. After being in two-short lived bands, The Hassles and Attila, Joel signed a record deal Family Productions as a solo artist. He released his debut album, Cold Spring Harbor, in 1971. After catching the attention of Columbia Records, he signed a new deal with them and released Piano Man. The album eventually sold five million copies, predominantly on the strength of the title cut, which became his first top 40 hit and signature song. A hidden clause in the Family Productions contract said he was signed to them for life so even after Joel had signed with Columbia, his old record company took a cut of Joel’s royalties until the late 1980s. AB Joel’s next two albums, Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles, produced fan favorites “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” and “New York State of Mind” but only produced one chart hit in the U.S. (“The Entertainer,” #34 BB). “For better and sometimes worse, Joel’s early albums were stylistic hodgepodges” DB which “blunted interesting songs with a sound that was neither Elton mellow nor Elton attitude.” AZ The Make or Break Album After the modest sales of 1976’s Turnstiles, Joel’s future with Columbia was uncertain. They were considering dropping him if the next album sold poorly. “Perhaps that danger gave Joel a ‘nothing less to lose’ attitude; he was so adamant that his new touring band record with him on his next album that when his first choice for producer, George Martin, wanted to use studio musicians, Joel turned him down.” CQ Phil Ramone – and Blockbuster Success Instead, Joel ended up working with Phil Ramone. Ramone had built a reputation, first as a producer and engineer with jazz artists and then more folk-rock-oriented acts. He reached a career pinnacle with Paul Simon’s 1975 release Still Crazy After All These Years when it won the Grammy for Album of the Year. “Joel still favored big, sweeping melodies, but Ramone convinced him to streamline his arrangements and clean up the production.” AM The Stranger “delivered on the promise of earlier albums…to become Billy Joel’s breakthrough album” AB and “the best collection of tracks in the hitmaker’s career.” CQ It sold 10 million copies worldwide, becoming Columbia’s all-time best-selling album WK until 1985. RD “The commercialism of The Stranger is a bit of a surprise” AM for “those who had written Joel off as a one-hit wonder.” AZ “The music swung with brash confidence” DB and offered the public “a slicker, more commercial version of what had come before.” AB It “was his most cohesive – and pumped up – record” DB and “is generally regarded by critics as his magnum opus.” WK The Material “The Stranger is a concept album of sorts, an ode to the singer’s native New York underscored by his paranoid obsession (and resistance) to change. While Joel’s music has always been patently ‘American,’ The Stranger is, in many ways, a rejection of the American dream. (It’s a proud New York record without the obviousness of ‘New York State of Mind,’ and it’s purely American without using slogans like ‘born in the U.S.A.’).” SL “Joel balanced…radio-ready material with a series of New York vignettes, seemingly inspired by Springsteen’s working-class fables and clearly intended to be the artistic centerpieces of the album. They do provide The Stranger with the feel of a concept album, yet there is no true thematic connection between the pieces, and his lyrics are often vague or mean-spirited.” AM “Joel rarely wrote a set of songs better than those on The Stranger, nor did he often deliver an album as consistently listenable.” AM The Stranger “remains a solid introduction to Joel's restless muse at a crucial point in his career.” AZ The album invites some “comparisons to Bruce Springsteen” AZ but in “a lower middle-class (Eastern Urban) setting, but Joel’s chameleonic, formalist approach to pop wasn't to be so easily pigeonholed.” AZ Reissue: In July 2008, a 2-disc 30th anniversary edition was released which added the previously unreleased concert Live at Carnegie Hall 1977. The Songs Here’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs.

Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel (see lyrics here) Released: September 1977 (single), The Stranger (1977), Greatest Hits Volume I & II (1985), The Ultimate Collection (2000), The Essential (2001), Piano Man: The Very Best of (2004), The Hits (2010) B-Side: “Everybody Has a Dream” (US), “Vienna” (UK), “She’s Always a Woman” (Europe) First Charted: 3/18/1978 Peak: 17 BB, 14 CB, 13 GR, 19 H, 15 RR, 40 AC, 7 CL, 35 UK, 11 CN, 99 AU, 2 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 24.70 video, 214.12 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: With “its teen rebellion message and car sounds” RD “Movin’ Out served as the perfect counterpoint to “Just the Way You Are,” the first charting single from The Stranger. That ballad reached #3 while “Movin’ Out” reminded fans of Joel’s rock and roll credibility. It is “a certified classic of American dream rebellion.” CQ Joel wrote “Movin’ Out” as an attack on the “New York working-class immigrant masculine ethos.” SF He said he saw friends who wasted their talents in favor of working long hours at unfulfilling jobs to afford the appearance of success. In the song, he cites characters such as Sergeant O’Leary who works two jobs so he can trade in his Chevy for a Cadillac. Joel said Anthony isn’t a real person but a representation of “every Irish, Polish, and Italian kid trying to make a living in the U.S.” WK He is also stuck in the pursuit of the American dream, pondering if it is worth the effort to own a home in the suburbs of Hackensack, New Jersey. Billboard described “Movin’ Out” as an “upbeat narrative that is…a commentary on upward mobility.” WK The song “decries the popular ’70s notion that moving out to the suburbs and starting a family is the means to a better life.” SL Joel sings, “Who needs a house out in Hackensack? / Is that all you get for your money?” Cashbox said the “growling cellos and a pulsating rhythm section set the mood for Joel’s threatening indictment of middle-class values..” WK It also said the song had “one of the best choruses he has written in some time, combined with unusual effects, a yapping horn section, and a melodic guitar finale that wraps it up nicely.” WK

The Stranger Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel (see lyrics here) Released: 5/21/1978 (Japan, single), The Stranger (1977), Greatest Hits Volume I & II (1985) B-Side: “Movin’ Out” Peak: 12 CL, 59 AU, 8 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, 0.47 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 8.87 video, 43.06 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: Joel’s “dynamic songwriting is…dramatized in the title track’s quiet piano introduction before rocking out in the middle section incorporating a barrage of electric guitars, concluding with the haunting sound of whistling. An amazing 24 people played various parts on the recording.” RD Joel initially intended the “signature whistle line” WK just as a fill-in. WK He thought the song needed some kind of prelude and played his idea on the piano for producer Phil Ramone, whistling the melody as he played. Joel said, “What instrument do you think should do that?” Ramone responded, “You just did it.” SF “That’s ‘The Stanger,’ the whistling.” WK “The Stranger might not carry the weight of Albert Camus’s famous novel of the same name, but its title track certainly finds the singer in an existential crisis, unable to completely expose his true self to his lover or himself: ‘Well, we all have a face/That we hide away forever/And we take them out and show ourselves/When everyone has gone.’” SL The song was an homage to Carl Jung’s definition of “The Shadow,” an unconscious part of the personality – the blind spot of one’s psyche. WK It’s about “how when we think we know somebody, we often hardly know that person at all.” SF Joel said it was partly inspired by his half-hearted attempt to kill himself by drinking furniture polish when he was 21. “It revealed a dark side of his personality that wasn’t readily apparent.” SF “The Stranger” was released as a single, but not in the United States. The song surprisingly went all the way to #2 in Japan – his first chart entry in that country and the most successful song of his career there. It was a top-10 hit in New Zealand, where it was his fourth top-20 hit. The other three hits were also from The Stranger. The song was used in 2020 during the end credits of the miniseries The Stand.

Just the Way You Are Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel (see lyrics here) Released: 9/26/1977 (single), The Stranger (1977), Greatest Hits Volume I & II (1985), The Ultimate Collection (2000), The Essential (2001), Piano Man: The Very Best of (2004) B-Side: “Get It Right the First Time” First Charted: 11/12/1977 Peak: 3 BB, 7 CB, 3 GR, 3 HR, 2 RR, 14 AC, 1 CL, 19 UK, 2 CN, 6 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 2.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 66.17 video, 355.97 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: Billy Joel had thirty three top-40 hits, ten of which reached the top 10. When he had his breakout hit with “Piano Man” in 1973, he’d already been recording and performing since 1965. It wasn’t until 1977 and “Just the Way You Are,” though, that he landed his first top-10 hit in the United States and first chart entry period in the UK. It also topped the Billboard adult contemporary chart and won Grammys for Record and Song of the Year. Joel said the melody and chord progression came to him in a dream. He also shared that the title was inspired the last line of “Rag Doll” by the Four Seasons. He wrote the song for Elizabeth Weber, his then-wife and business manager. WK He gave the “pure expression of unconditional love” to her as a birthday present. SF Unfortunately, the two divorced in 1982, after which time Joel said he didn’t like playing the song live. WK He said, “Every time I wrote a song for a person I was in a relationship with, it didn’t last. It was kind of like the curse. Here’s your song – we might as well say goodbye now.” SF It is “an uncharacteristically gooey ballad (for this early in his career) that, like most of his songs, displays an underlying sadness.” SL Neither Joel nor the band liked the song. Joel said, “Ehh, that’s a chick song,” DB dismissing it as a “gloppy ballad” that would only get played at weddings. “It wasn’t even rock ‘n’ roll; it was like a standard with a little bit of R&B in it. It reminded me of an old Stevie Wonder recording.” SF Joel had decided against including it on The Stranger, but Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow, who were both recording in other studios in the same building, encouraged him to put it on the album. WK Phil Ramone, the album’s producer, said they couldn’t afford to exclude the song because they didn’t have that much material to choose from. WK Paul McCartney has said it is one of the few songs he wished he’d written. SF The song has since been covered by more than 200 artists AM including Harry Connick Jr., Isaac Hayes, Diana Krall, Johnny Mathis & Deniece Williams, Willie Nelson, Frank Sinatra, and Barry White.

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel Released: The Stranger (1977), Greatest Hits Volume I & II (1985), Piano Man: The Very Best of (2004) Peak: 7 CL, 2 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 86.27 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: Joel’s “melodies sound more Broadway than Beatles – the epic suite Scenes from an Italian Restaurant feels like a show-stopping closer.” AM It is “his ‘A Day in the Life,’ if you will, albeit from the perspective of a bitter New Yorker.” SL With is “bouncy piano” SL the “astonishing” RD song demonstrates “Joel’s gift for storytelling.” RD It was “a characteristic Joel observation on New York life” AB that was the result of combining three different songs. AB “It’s the tale of Brenda and Eddie, the prom king and queen who moved out the suburbs to start a new life together but, as Joel poignantly narrates, ‘just didn’t count on the tears.’” SL

Vienna Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel Released: September 1977 (UK B-side of “Movin’ Out”), April 1978 (B-side of “She’s Always a Woman”), The Stranger (1977) Peak: 21 CL, 14 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 996.43 streaming

About the Song: The significance of The Stranger as the most significant release in Billy Joel’s catalog is readily apparent when looking at his top 10 most streamed songs. Half are from The Stranger. Not surprisingly, four of those are the singles. The shocker, though, is that “Vienna” is more streamed than any of the singles. It is Joel’s third most-streamed song after 1983’s “Uptown Girl” and 1973’s “Piano Man.” NP

Only the Good Die Young Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel Released: May 1978 (single), The Stranger (1977), Greatest Hits Volume I & II (1985), The Essential (2001), Piano Man: The Very Best of (2004), The Hits (2010) B-Side: “Get It Right the First Time” First Charted: 5/13/1978 Peak: 24 BB, 25 CB, 18 GR, 24 HR, 22 RR, 8 CL, 18 CN, 3 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 2.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 250.97 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: Joel “never had created a rocker as bouncy or infectious as Only the Good Die Young.” AM The song “remains as rife for yearbook send-off quotes as it did when Christian groups demanded it be banned from the radio.” CQ The opening lines of the song are “Come out, Virginia, don’t let me wait / You Catholic girls start much too late / Aw, but sooner or later it comes down to fate / I might as well will be the one.” The song, which “explains a girl’s Catholic blues by way of the greaser down the block,” SL It proved a success despite the controversy. It was Joel’s fourth top-40 hit.

She’s Always a Woman Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel Released: September 1977 (European B-side of “Movin’ Out”), April 1978 (single), The Stranger (1977), Greatest Hits Volume I & II (1985), The Ultimate Collection (2000), The Essential (2001), Piano Man: The Very Best of (2004) B-Side: “Vienna” First Charted: 8/5/1978 Peak: 17 BB, 18 CB, 12 GR, 19 H, 14 RR, 2 AC, 6 CL, 29 UK, 12 CN, 7 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 31.0 video, 587.81 streaming

About the Song: “The glossy production of She's Always a Woman disguises its latent misogynist streak.” AM The song is in a similar vein to “Just the Way You Are,” the #3 ballad that launched Joel and The Stranger into the stratosphere. With a “classic, delicate melody” SL this “gentler” RD song is “thinly veiled in optimism: ‘She is frequently kind / And she’s suddenly cruel’.” SL It was the fourth song to chart from the album. All four reached the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Get It Right the First Time Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel Released: 9/26/1977 (B-side of “Just the Way You Are”), May 1978 (B-side of “Only the Good Die Young”), The Stranger (1977) Peak: 34 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 9.26 streaming

Everybody Has a Dream Billy Joel

Writer(s): Billy Joel Released: September 1977 (US B-side of “Movin’ Out”) The Stranger (1977) Peak: 33 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 6.93 streaming

Resources/References: AM AllMusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine AZ Amazon.com essential recording, review by Don Harrison AB Michael Spilling (editor) (2015). Best-Selling Albums: From Vinyl Records to Digital Downloads. Amber Books Ltd.: London, United Kingdom. Page 88. DB David Browne (June 2007). Blender magazine. Pages 114-5. CQ Consequence.net (9/12/2022). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 374. NP New York Post (8/2/2025). These are the top 10 most streamed Billy Joel songs on Spotify” by Angela Barbuti SL Slant Magazine (6/30/2003). “Vital Pop: 50 Essential Pop Albums” by Slant staff SF Songfacts page for “Just the Way You Are” SF Songfacts page for “Movin’ Out” SF Songfacts page for “The Stranger” WK Wikipedia page for The Stranger WK Wikipedia page for “Just the Way You Are” WK Wikipedia page for “Movin’ Out” WK Wikipedia page for “The Stranger” Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/24/2008; last updated 2/8/2026.