Sony Legacy
2008
The Stranger (30th Anniversary Edition)
About This Album
Much of the success of Billy Joel's fifth album, The Stranger, has been attributed to his pairing with producer Phil Ramone, who surely did help turn Joel's tunes into stainless pop, but a heavy focus on Ramone tends to give the producer too much credit, attributing the record's phenomenal success to his presence. This, of course, isn't quite true, as Joel already had his artistic breakthrough on 1976's Turnstiles and The Stranger built upon that, carrying through on that record's combination of dramatic spectacle (there's a through line from "Angry Young Man" and "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" to "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" and "The Stranger"), gentle ballads, and McCartneyesque melody. Ramone gave Joel's music a soft impeccable gloss that turned it into a hit that rivaled Fleetwood Mac's Rumours -- the other big American mainstream pop sensation of 1977 -- but the core of the album's success is naturally due to Joel's songs and the durability of his touring band, an argument that the deluxe 30th anniversary reissue of The Stranger makes plain.

Weighing in at three discs -- two CDs plus a DVD (there is a separate, cheaper edition minus the DVD) -- this is a heavy expansion of the original nine-track album, but there are no alternate takes here, no unreleased songs, which shouldn't come as a great surprise as Billy Joel has little of that kind of thing buried in the vaults (and what he does have was largely unearthed in 2005's My Lives box).
Track List

Disc 1 (try track 8)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 9)

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