The Stranger

I'm going to switch gears here a little bit and talk about an individual album. One album I've been particularly into lately is by Billy Joel, an artist who is not only a great singer, but is also a fabulous piano player and songwriter, and that is part of his appeal - for me anyways. Like many stars, he went through periods of depression and alcohol abuse, but the songs he wrote were nonetheless great, whether they were simple catchy pop tunes, or whether they meant something more.

The album that I consider to be the masterpiece of his career was written back in 1977 and was called "The Stranger". What I find interesting about this title is that despite it being a pop album, it still touches upon some of the same themes that the novel "The Stranger", by Albert Camus, does. The novel is an existentialist view of the idea of the self vs the other. In other words, it shows the divide between the inidividual and society, or the inidividual and the other side of themselves. While it is certainly less obvious in Billy Joel's album, the theme very clearly exists.

The most obvious reference is the title track, which presents the idea that "we all have a face that we hide away forever", representing the other side of each person's personality, or "the stranger". This theme carries through most of the rest of the album, although in a very subtle way. Many songs in the album are stories about different people. Everyone from Anthony in "Movin' Out" to Brenda and Eddie in "Scenes from An Italian Retaurant" and even the treacherous woman referenced in "She's Always A Woman". Although this might be a stretch, I think that each person's story represents one of the many faces that we hide away forever. Each song is a different version of how our life could end up if we let a certain part of ourselves take over. This might not have been what Joel intended, but I feel like I can read into it that far.

"Just The Way You Are" is my favorite song on the album, and while it does not fit into that theme, it could be seen as a reference to the fact that who we are is better than who the stranger inside of us is.

The last song "Everybody Has A Dream", while it is about no specific person, clearly references all of the people in the songs throughout the album. They all had dreams, whether those dreams came to anything or not. And finally, to close off the album, the piano theme from the beginning of the title track returns, to bring back the theme of the stranger.

Ok, maybe I'm reading waaaaay too much into this, but if you listen to the album in that way you might notice a few interesting things. Anyways, musically speaking the album is fabulous, and I would recommend you listen to the entire album, but my favorites are definitely "Just The Way You Are", "Scenes from An Italian Restaurant", and "She's Always A Woman".

Well I got a little more philosophical than I intended to there, but whether you appreciate the philosophy or not, listen to this album. It's quite a work of art.