Billy Joel, born in the Bronx in 1949, is one of the defining American pop-rock songwriters, with a Columbia catalog stretching from Piano Man (1973) through River of Dreams (1993). The Stranger and the Grammy-winning 52nd Street are the core of any collection — start there and work outward. Dig into Billy Joel vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
William Martin Joel was born in The Bronx, New York on May 9, 1949 and raised on Long Island. He began his recording career in the late 1960s, signing with Columbia Records in 1973. His breakthrough came with Piano Man (1973), and he developed into one of the dominant pop-rock songwriters of the late 1970s and 1980s. The Stranger (1977), produced by Phil Ramone, marked his first major commercial success; 52nd Street (1978) won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. He stopped releasing new studio pop material after River of Dreams (1993), focusing on touring, classical composition, and the Madison Square Garden monthly residency that ran from 2014 to 2024.
Billy Joel's sound combines pop rock, soft rock, and singer-songwriter traditions with piano-based arrangements and lyrical attention to New York City, Long Island, and working-class American life. His compositions move fluently across genre - doo-wop pastiche (An Innocent Man), Latin and jazz (52nd Street), new wave (Glass Houses), and classical-influenced piano writing.
Original Columbia pressings of The Stranger and 52nd Street are widely collected. Multiple anniversary reissues, box sets, and audiophile pressings of the Billy Joel catalog have been released, including 50th anniversary editions of Piano Man.
Listeners new to Billy Joel typically start with The Stranger (1977) or 52nd Street (1978).
