Billy Joel

On The Bridge, his first LP of new material in three years, Billy Joel gracefully rounds off
the latest – and richest – phase of his tempestuous career. The album essentially forms a
trilogy with 1982's outward-looking The Nylon Curtain and 1983's backward-looking An
Innocent Man, offering a modest yet moving portrait of a mature man battling the urban
strains of the Eighties in search of both a separate peace and a sense of connect... More >

Maybe his youthful lyricism, meaning his knack for the tearjerker, is abandoning him. On Greatest Hits "Just the Way You Are" and "She's Always a Woman" are every bit as alive as "Movin' Out" and "Allentown," but here he's best when he's brassy and literal: failed wise guy in "Big Man on Mulberry Street," Ray Charles's coequal on "Baby Grand." And even at his most rockin' he's seventy-five years retro whether he likes it or not--whenever he doesn't hit it just right you want to quarantine him for life in Atlantic City. (Grade: B)