Billy Joel, 52nd Street
Featured Album
One of Joel's best rock albums — with visits from some of jazz's top players
The theme of 52nd Street, if you take its title literally, is the New York block famous for jazz in the 1940s and 1950s. In truth, this isn't so much a jazz album as it is an album inspired by the notion of jazz. Despite guest visits from some top jazz players, it's actually one of Joel's best rock albums. Joel attacks from the opening moments of the first tune, with "Big Shot"'s pumping piano chords and lines about a woman from a sophisticated address with "the Dom Perignon in your hand and the spoon up your nose."
There's plenty of anger here, including the fabulous "My Life" which, at the time, was Joel's biggest pop hit. "Go ahead with your own life and leave me alone," he sings; though he puts those words in the mouth of an "old friend," it could be his own proud epitaph. There are no pulled punches here, from the anger (similar to that of "Big Shot") of "Stiletto," to the almost too-direct-for-comfort ballad "Honesty." The title theme is picked up specifically by the song "Zanzibar," a bit of Steely Dan-ish pop-jazz featuring some outstanding soloing by Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and an impressionistic mèlange of sports imagery in the lyrics: Muhammad Ali, Pete Rose, the New York Yankees — your call, sports fans.
On the second half of the album, Joel and producer Phil Ramone move into genre exercises that are generally pleasing: a feint towards Latin pop in "Rosalinda's Eyes," Motown meets Blood, Sweat and Tears in "Half A Mile Away" and, most memorably, Joel singing mostly low in what may be his Righteous Brothers tribute, "Until the Night."
