Billy Joel’s album The Stranger was released on September 29, 1977 by Columbia Records. The Stranger was his 5th full length album to be released. Surprisingly this album did not have one single number one hit song! The top song according to Billboard’s Hot 100 is Just The Way You Are, which peaked at #3 on February 18th, 1978. Three other songs found their way into the Billboard Hot 100 which include She’s Always A Woman peaking at #17, Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) peaked at #17 as well, and lastly Only The Good Die Young peaked at #24. Even though this album didn’t have a #1 hit, it is considered to be Billy Joel’s top selling album. It has sold more than 10 million copies making it a Diamond certification in the United States. In this review we present two different rankings based on what we think are the top songs. It is alright to have different opinions then us which we found out that we even disagree on what the best song is.
Cameron’s Ranking
1. Vienna
2. Moving Out (Anthony’s Song)
3. Only The Good Die Young
4. Scenes of an Italian Restaurant
5. She’s Always A Woman
6. Just The Way You Are
7. Everybody Has A Dream
8. The Stranger
9. Get It Right The First Time
The album overall is great top to bottom. Really this album doesn’t need a ranking because all of the songs are so good. Vienna stood out as the top song to me. The next four songs (2-5) really could be interchanged, they all are just so good and easy to sing along to.
Jackson’s Ranking
1. Only the good die young
2. The Stranger
3. Vienna
4. Moving Out (Anthony’s Song)
5. Get it right the first time
6. She’s always a woman
7. Scenes from an Italian restaurant
8. Everybody has a dream
9. Just the way you are
The Stranger, released by Billy Joel in 1977, is such a great album, I had a hard time ranking it. As you can tell by the list, I ranked the more upbeat songs higher than others. Listening through the album, I couldn’t seem to find a song that I didn’t like, therefore making it hard to rank. It’s not that I don’t like the slower songs, but the more energetic songs seem more appealing to me. I hope that this review gives you an idea of how I feel about this album.
Post Remarks
As you can see, we didn’t agree on really any of the songs in their rankings but the one thing we did agree on is that it is a great album! Possibly Billy Joel’s best album to date (Please, Please, Please, make a new album Billy Joel, but highly unlikely) so we both highly recommend checking out this album if you haven’t already! Links to Apple Music/iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Google Music will be below so you can go check out the album for yourself.