Ranking the 5 Best Album-Closers by Billy Joel

Billy Joel has released a dozen albums in the pop-rock vein throughout his career. (Notice we used the word “has,” because we’re holding out hope that there’s more to come.) Many of those albums are among the most beloved of their respective eras.

Like other greats, Joel knows how to send an album out on a high note. Here are what we feel are the five finest album-closers of his career.

5. “Captain Jack” from Piano Man (1973)

Joel, whose candor in interviews about his material is always refreshing, has mentioned many times he’s not overly fond of this track, despite it being monumental in terms of helping him gain an audience. It’s certainly not as subtle lyrically or as complex musically as some of the stuff he’d do down the road. And yet the boldness of it is very Billy Joel. It also displays his career-long ability to slip into whatever genre was hot at the time and not lose his identity. In this case, the arrangement of “Captain Jack” definitely feels influenced by the glam rock that was so prevalent circa ’73.

4. “Keeping the Faith” from An Innocent Man (1983)

The thematic hook of An Innocent Man comes from the throwback vibes of the music, as Joel paid homage to many of his early rock, R&B, and doo-wop heroes. With “Keeping the Faith,” he manages to sum up all his feelings about that era, and he makes it clear they weren’t always halcyon days: You know the good old days weren’t always good, he sings. Joel was clearly anticipating what some critics were going to say about the album, and planned the track as a kind of defense against that. With the charming lyrical evidence he provides, no jury would ever convict him.

3. “Where’s the Orchestra?” from The Nylon Curtain (1982)

Joel went for broke in making The Nylon Curtain, giving every effort to ensure the record was as sonically clever as could be. He was doing all this at a time of some personal turmoil (he was going through a divorce), and while singing a batch of mostly downbeat, albeit often brilliant songs. On “Where’s the Orchestra?” he seems to pull back and ask his audience, and himself, if it was all worth it. Bathed in delicate strings and horns that give it a weightless, floating feel, the song features some of Joel’s best lyrical work as well, as he connects his metaphor effectively to his personal malaise.

2. “And So It Goes” from Storm Front (1989)

After The Bridge came out feeling a bit unfocused and ineffectual in 1986, Joel came back much more decisively with Storm Front in 1989. Perhaps the switch to using Foreigner’s Mick Jones as co-producer brought a fresh take to the proceedings and breathed some life into it. More than likely, Joel just simply had a stronger batch of songs in him at this time. “And So It Goes” is one of those Joel melodies that really hit home, even without any consideration of the meaning of the words. When you add the lyrics, which speak eloquently of a relationship’s denouement, that puts it over the top.

1. “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” from Turnstiles (1976)

Turnstiles wasn’t a popular smash. (That would come the following year for Joel with The Stranger). But it now stands as one of the finest albums in his catalog. It’s a kind of love letter to New York, to which he was returning at the time after a stint on the West Coast. As a way of paying the ultimate tribute to the city, he uses the last song to imagine how much would be lost if it all suddenly went away. Without overly sentimentalizing the Big Apple, he evokes the passion and spirit of the people within it via the defiant, elegiac lyrics and the stirring music.

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