How do you follow that? With six more best-sellers, all of them multi-platinum, and all here.
Billy’s 80s bangers included Uptown Girl and Tell Her About It, both from 1983’s An Innocent Man.
1980’s Grammy-winning Glass Houses was his rockiest work. An angry response to being written off as “soft” by US music mags, it spawned his defiant American chart-topper It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me, and ranged from the Elton-like bop of You May Be
Right to the Macca-style pop of Don’t Ask Me Why.
He’s proudest of 1982’s The Nylon Curtain, his tribute to The Beatles after John Lennon’s tragic murder.
The standout tracks include Allentown, about the demise of the American steel industry, and the plaintive Where’s The Orchestra? – a metaphor for realising adult life isn’t always an upbeat musical.
1993’s River Of Dreams was his last pop album. This hefty box set also includes a 2XLP pressing of 2001’s instrumental Fantasies & Delusions plus photos, a booklet and the firstever vinyl release of his 1982 Nassau Coliseum show.
Not all of these tracks are great. Billy himself cites C’etait Toi (from Glass Houses) and When In Rome (from 1989’s Storm Front) as “real stinkers” he wished he’d never written. But these are rare missteps.
Knockers still knock, but Joel, 74, who has sold more than 150 million records, has had the last laugh with TikTokers embracing Zanzibar, and Olivia Rodrigo dropping his name in Deja Vu.
Ever restless, he played stadiums with Stevie Nicks earlier this year, and also has a residency at Madison Square Garden.
