Glass Houses

Rate It! Avg: 4.5 (138 ratings)
Sample Album
ALBUM INFORMATION

Total Tracks: 10   Total Length: 34:40

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self-inflicted foot-shooting

2fs

My critical cred is about to go in the toilet: this is a pretty good album. Sony's stupid, though: let's see, 12 credits for 10 tracks...when the one track not available on its own after the 9 credits for individual download is (ahem) sailing down a long South American river for 99 cents...

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Good Cd

yellowman

I've been listening to this cd on and off for the past 29 odd years now, and I still find it a listenable experience.

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New Wave?

RY33

I remember all the furor when "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" came out and everyone thought Billy was going "New Wave". Good Lord! We just look for ways to annoy ourselves don't we? A good solid album. Tracks 1-5 are as good as anything Billy ever did. Billy had a thing for songs about nasty women. "All For Leyna" and "Stilletto" are just scary. The CD kinda gets weak at the end but not enough to kill the album .

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Underrated

oldpunkandrew

An underrated treasure - perhaps Billy Joel's best after "The Stranger." I'm glad eMusic has this, as I sold my original vinyl in a yard sale years ago, when I didn't recognize its worth.

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They Say All Media Guide

The back-to-back success of The Stranger and 52nd Street may have brought Billy Joel fame and fortune, even a certain amount of self-satisfaction, but it didn’t bring him critical respect, and it didn’t dull his anger. If anything, being classified as a mainstream rocker — a soft rocker — infuriated him, especially since a generation of punks and new wave kids were getting the praise that eluded him. He didn’t take this lying down — he recorded Glass Houses. Comparatively a harder-rocking album than either of its predecessors, with a distinctly bitter edge, Glass Houses still displays the hallmarks of Billy Joel the pop craftsman and Phil Ramone the world-class hitmaker. Even its hardest songs — the terrifically paranoid “Sometimes a Fantasy,” “Sleepin’ With the Television On,” “Close to the Borderline,” the hit “You May Be Right” — have bold, direct melodies and clean arrangements, ideal for radio play. Instead of turning out to be a fiery rebuttal to his detractors, the album is a remarkable catalog of contemporary pop styles, from McCartney-esque whimsy (“Don’t Ask Me Why”) and arena rock (“All for Leyna”) to soft rock (“C’etait Toi [You Were the One]“) and stylish new wave pop (“It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” which ironically is closer to new wave pop than rock). That’s not a detriment; that’s the album’s strength. The Stranger and 52nd Street were fine albums in their own right, but it’s nice to hear Joel scale back his showman tendencies and deliver a solid pop/rock record. It may not be punk — then again, it may be his concept of punk — but Glass Houses is the closest Joel ever got to a pure rock album. – Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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