The Stranger is the fifth studio album by musician Billy Joel, released in 1977. While his four previous albums had been moderate chart successes, this was his breakthrough album, and is generally regarded by critics as his magnum opus, spending six weeks at #2 in the U.S. album charts. It remains Joel's best-selling non-compilation album to date and was ranked number 67 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
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The Stranger is the fifth studio album by musician Billy Joel, released in 1977. While his four previous albums had been moderate chart successes, this was his breakthrough album, and is generally regarded by critics as his magnum opus, spending six weeks at #2 in the U.S. album charts. It remains Joel's best-selling non-compilation album to date and was ranked number 67 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The Stranger contained nine songs; "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "She's Always a Woman," "Just The Way You Are," "Everybody Has A Dream," and "Only The Good Die Young" were all written prior to recording, while "Vienna," "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," "The Stranger," and "Get It Right The First Time" all came from short tunes or fragments of songs that Joel finished in the studio. Each song had stories attached to it. The seven-and-a-half-minute epic "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" began as the shorter "Ballad of Brenda and Eddie," a...
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