The Stranger

Years of often bleak lounge and club gigs had given "Piano Man" enough first-person edge to become his first significant hit, but Billy Joel finally crashed the big time in 1977 with this muscular commercial breakthrough, an album that still stands among his most confident and accomplished. If the collection's uber-slick signature ballad "Just the Way You Are" made him anathema to the nascent punk revolution, it nonetheless scored the ultimate Grammy honor as both Song and Record of the Year. Producer Phil Ramone brings out the latent '50s roots of songs like "Only the Good Die Young," while burnishing "Movin' Out" and the neo-classical melodicism of "She's Always a Woman to Me" to elegant perfection. There's a palpable edge to many of Joel's performances here; coupled with an ability to forge strong personas in his work that rivaled Randy Newman's, it's a collection whose best songs often blur the line between observation and autobiography.