On July 25, 2024, Billy Joel will play his 150th lifetime show at New York's Madison Square Garden.  It will be the 104th show of the first-of-its-kind residency which began in 2014.  Remarkably yet unsurprisingly, his final ten shows are already sold out.  More remarkably - but just as unsurprisingly to anyone who's followed the singer-songwriter over the past 30 years - he's filled the cavernous arena 100+ times over the past decade without introducing a single new song.  (His last two pop songs as of this writing were 2007's "All My Life" and "Christmas in Fallujah.")  So why does Billy Joel continue to fill the seats of The World's Most Famous Arena, never disappointing the near-20,000 audience members?  The answers can largely be found in the new box set from Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings.  The Vinyl Collection Vol. 2 picks up where 2021's first volume left off, collecting the final six studio albums of his recording career to date: Glass Houses (1980), The Nylon Curtain (1982), An Innocent Man (1983), The Bridge (1986), Storm Front (1989), and River of Dreams (1993) plus the debut vinyl pressing of the classical set Fantasies and Delusions (2001), composed by Joel but played by Hyung-ki (originally billed as Richard) Joo.

The second Vinyl Collection begins just a couple of albums after Joel teamed with producer Phil Ramone for 1977's The Stranger, his commercial breakthrough.  The Stranger yielded four top 40 hits, all of which could be heard on any given evening at Madison Square Garden: "Just the Way You Are," "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "She's Always a Woman," and "Only the Good Die Young."  That's to say nothing of "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" and "Vienna," two more fan favorites.  The Stranger won two Grammy Awards, remains the singer's best-selling album, and surpassed the sales of Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water to become, to that point, Columbia Records' best-selling album of all time.  How to follow that?  Joel tapped into his love of jazz for 1978's 52nd Street and would swing the pendulum to rock (albeit with his firmly-entrenched pop sensibility) for 1980's Glass Houses - netting another Grammy Award and his first No. 1 song, too.  The Vinyl Collection Vol. 2 trades the first box's story of a talented up-and-comer who gets his big break for one of an established superstar traveling many musical roads until he decides to close the book on his songwriting career.

Glass Houses was ostensibly Billy Joel's response to the rise of punk and new wave.  "Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound, funny, but it's still rock and roll to me," he snarled.  The chart-topping, of-the-moment "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" was one of four singles that top-loaded Side One of the original LP.  Joel and his band - Richie Cannata on organ, sax, and flute; Russell Javors on rhythm guitar; Doug Stegmeyer on bass; Liberty DeVitto on drums and percussion; and new recruit David Brown on lead guitar - and producer Ramone brought an equally hard edge to the confessional "You May Be Right" ("I may be crazy/But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for"), the breakneck phone sex dream "Sometimes a Fantasy," and the tense, obsessive "All for Leyna" (a U.K. single).  The fifth track on Side One, the infectious and flavorful "Don't Ask Me Why," largely eschewed the rock concept with its stacked pianos, acoustic instrumentation, and Latin percussion (DeVitto played maracas, castanets, triangle, claves, rachet, and bass drum on the track) supporting the elliptical lyrical musing on romance and pretension.  Joel took a rare piano solo, too, inspired by classical great (and MGM star) Jose Iturbi.

Side Two, as well, was a diverse collection of sounds and styles under the rock umbrella.  Both "I Don't Want to Be Alone" and "Sleeping with the Television On" - one a pleasant ballad, the other a driving rocker - both bear the influence of new wave as epitomized at the time by Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello (not coincidentally, both searching artists who have similarly mastered numerous styles).  "Close to the Borderline," with a searing David Brown guitar solo, evokes a more relaxed "Pressure" in its depiction of daily burdens taking the singer close to the breaking point.  The gentle "Through the Long Night" is one of many Joel songs to evoke his inspirations, The Beatles, with its lilting, McCartney-esque quality and harmonies.  Least successful might be "C'etait Toi (You Were the One)."  Partially sung in French, it doesn't rise above its merely pleasant music and lyric.  ("Every dog must have his day," Joel sang in "Don't Ask Me Why."  That rang true for "C'etait Toi" when it was memorably used on the first season of Freaks and Geeks.)  Though Glass Houses feels lopsided due to all five singles coming in rapid succession on its first side, it's a vivid portrait of Joel meeting his contemporaries head-on and perhaps his finest straight-ahead "rock" album.  A No. 1 LP, it's since gone 7x Platinum.

Joel modestly set out with his next album to write "a real sonic masterpiece...It's very, very rich.  Almost like I was trying to go for a Sgt. Pepper kind of thing, where I was experimenting, playing the studio as an instrument."  One might describe 1982's The Nylon Curtain as a success d'estime.  Joel is quoted in the booklet: "Maybe it wasn't as big a hit as other albums, maybe it wasn't as commercial as other albums, but this is, essentially, the material I'm most proud of, and the recording I'm most proud of (until the last album in 1993)."

It's not hard to see why Joel remains so proud of The Nylon Curtain.  It's a dawn-of-the-Reagan-era collection of musical vignettes, some of which reflected on the political and social landscape of the period.  The opening "Allentown" is one of his quintessential compositions, an anthem for the disillusioned working class filled with poignant sighs of resignation ("Well, we're waiting here in Allentown/For the Pennsylvania we never found/For the promises our teachers gave/If we worked hard/If we behaved...") and frustration ("Every child had a pretty good shot/To get at least as far as their old man got/But something happened on the way to that place/They threw an American flag in our face").  The Vietnam War comes into even sharper focus on the moving "Goodnight Saigon." Though Joel himself didn't serve, he drew on the experiences of his friends suffering from what's now known as PTSD.  Its refrain "We would all go down together" is simple and shattering.

The stresses that are threaded throughout The Nylon Curtain bubble to the surface on the explosive "Pressure" and on "Laura," where he exclaims he's "feeling like a fucking fool" when dealing with the woman in question.  Phil Ramone's widescreen production lent cinematic flavor to "Allentown" and "Goodnight Saigon" and explicitly channeled Joel's John Lennon influence on the heroin-inspired fantasia "Scandinavian Skies."  Joel looked inward for the ruminative "A Room of Our Own" and understated "Where's the Orchestra," an ironic finale to all that came before: "Where's the orchestra?  Wasn't this supposed to be a musical?  Here I am in the balcony...how the hell could I have missed the overture?"  From overture to exit music, The Nylon Curtain revealed a restless artist unfinished with the expected.  His next album defied expectations even further.  It would spin off six hit singles, three of which would go to the top ten and affirm Joel's status as a pop tunesmith nonpareil.

Throughout his career, Joel always openly acknowledged his inspirations.  On An Innocent Man, he brought their music back to life as only he could.  An ebullient, joyful, and romantic celebration of '50s and '60s rock and soul, the album was a radical departure from The Nylon Curtain and a reflection of the artist's newfound contentedness.  He had begun dating supermodels Elle MacPherson and future wife Christie Brinkley and was enjoying his status as a bona fide rock star when he penned this suite of ten songs, most of which would ultimately earn the same classic status as the compositions that influenced them.  Joel had previously dabbled in such homages, whether 52nd Street's "Until the Night" a la The Righteous Brothers, or The Nylon Curtain's "Scandinavian Skies" in the style of John Lennon.  An Innocent Man took those tributes to the next level.

Joel had studied the masters well; throughout the LP, you'll hear echoes of Hayes and Porter, Crewe and Gaudio, Bacharach and David, Goffin and King, Holland-Dozier-Holland, and Mann and Weil.  Yet the songs never resort to outright pastiche; Joel was always too clever a melodist and arranger for that.  "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" was designed after Bacharach and David's "Walk on By" and "What the World Needs Now Is Love," but Joel and producer Ramone eschewed the superficial trappings that many inspired by Bacharach would have utilized (such as a flugelhorn).  Instead, Joel subtly but painstakingly recreated Bacharach's shifting and unexpected musical turns - staccato phrases, stops and starts - in devising his own indelible melody.  There's giddy joy in the doo-wop voicings of "The Longest Time," the feel-good, Four Seasons-esque "Uptown Girl," brassy, Stax-styled "Easy Money," and Motown dance party "Tell Her About It."  The honeyed but dramatic sound of The Drifters is evoked on "An Innocent Man," which (like "Uptown Girl") made good use of Joel's best falsetto.  His beloved classical music was touched upon, too, when he purloined the chorus of "This Night" from a certain "L.V. Beethoven" for the sweet and soaring ballad.

Even in the electronics-dominated pop landscape of 1983, An Innocent Man didn't sound dated; its nostalgia wasn't forced and Joel and his crack band's performances were startlingly immediate.  Their celebration of a bygone era captivated radio and record buyers, remaining on the charts for 111 (!) weeks and shooting "Tell Her About It," "Uptown Girl," and "An Innocent Man" into the top ten, with "The Longest Time," "Keeping the Faith," and "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" not far behind.  Joel described having great fun writing the songs on An Innocent Man; that spirit was communicated directly to listeners.  It was short-lived, though; Joel's next studio album would take on a different feel altogether.  Before that, though, he would release his hugely successful two-volume Greatest Hits collection, today the sixth most certified album of all time in the U.S., with 11.5 million copies sold.

Billy comments to liner notes author Rob Tannenbaum of 1986's The Bridge, "I was having a hard time, and writing the last few songs was agonizing.  The band was dissolving [the album would be the last to feature Russell Javors and Doug Stegmeyer], and my working relationship with Phil was coming to an end.  I hear in the writing a certain reluctance to continue...I don't think [it's] all that good.  I didn't give it my best shot.   I wasn't 100 percent there."

While Joel is typically hard on himself, it's hard to disagree with his assessment.  An eclectic array of styles and moods, The Bridge never adds up to the sum of its parts.  Still, one can't argue with the craft - or the success - of such songs as the rocking "A Matter of Trust," future high school dance perennial "This Is the Time," or the affectionate Ray Charles duet "Baby Grand."  The jazz flavor of "Big Man on Mulberry Street," featuring bassist Ron Carter and saxophonist Michael Brecker, is appealing, while the Police-esque "Running on Ice" captures the same jagged anxiety of "Pressure."  There's cleverness, too, in "Temptation," which doubles as a straightforward love song while actually being about work/life balance in the wake of Joel's becoming a father to Alexa Ray.  A rare songwriting collaboration, "Code of Silence" with duet partner Cyndi Lauper, is oddly nondescript, and the fiery "Getting Closer" ("I'm a mark for every shyster from Topanga to Berlin/And I should have learned to kick them out/As soon as they crawled in") - with Billy's inspiration Steve Winwood on organ - never rises above its righteous anger.

Dark clouds would linger over Joel's next (and penultimate) studio effort, 1989's Storm Front.  "There's a storm front coming/White water running and the pressure is low," he sang on the rhythmic title track which owed a great debt to Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer."  The collaboration with Phil Ramone which had begun on 1977's The Stranger had concluded, and Foreigner's Mick Jones was now sharing production duties with Joel.  Only Liberty DeVitto, David Brown, and Mark Rivera were retained from Joel's longtime band for this often-solemn set of AOR rockers and moody ballads.  Despite the downbeat air, there's energy a-plenty on Storm Front - most notably on the stadium-ready declaration "I Go to Extremes," the forceful defense of his wife against the gossip rags, "That's Not Her Style," and the history-lesson-in-song "We Didn't Start the Fire."  In later years, Joel has slammed the simplicity of the latter's melody, but that wasn't the point; he got an entire generation of young people looking up thalidomide, Syngman Rhee, and [George] Santayana.  Elsewhere, Storm Front offers up the evocative "Downeaster Alexa," incurably romantic "Shameless" (which Garth Brooks transformed into a hit and signature song) and semi-autobiographical "Leningrad" (set to a lovely Arif Mardin orchestration).  If the meditative closer "And So It Goes" feels like it was dropped in from another album, it almost was; the song was copyrighted in 1983, between The Nylon Curtain and An Innocent Man.  Ultimately, Storm Front (his third No. 1 album) garnered multiple Grammy nominations and four Hot 100 hits including the chart-topping "We Didn't Start the Fire" and top ten "I Go to Extremes," but its harsher edge seemed lightyears away from the fun of An Innocent Man.

When Billy re-emerged four years later in 1993 with River of Dreams, the bucolic cover painting by Christie Brinkley might have indicated that a new era was about to begin.  Instead, it marked the end of a 22-year studio odyssey for William Martin Joel.  He wrote its ten songs in an approximation of the final album sequence, effectively convincing himself that it was time to wrap up his pop songwriting career with the closer, "Famous Last Words": "These are the last words I have to say/Before another age goes by/With all those other songs I have to play/Ain't that the story of my life..."  In thirty years, he's by and large kept to his promise.  So if River of Dreams is inherently bittersweet to those fans still holding out for a new Billy Joel album, there's much to savor en route to "Famous Last Words."

After a series of abortive demos, Joel teamed with veteran guitarist Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar as producer and a cadre of studio veterans in the band.  (Guitarist Tommy Byrnes, a new recruit in '93, is still with Joel today; Liberty DeVitto, a mainstay in Joel's group until 2006, played on just one song.)  Much like on Storm Front, the songs were serious in nature, but this time, Joel conceived the album as a thematic song cycle loosely tracing an unhappy man who's lost faith and gains a measure of peace and grace by album's end through love, family, and friends.  The hard-hitting opening salvo "No Man's Land," the excoriating "The Great Wall of China," directed at the ex-manager and ex-brother-in-law whom he had sued for allegedly embezzling $90 million, and the downbeat "A Minor Variation" ("Some days I have to give right in to the blues/Despite how I try to keep fightin'/It's a sure shot I'm going to lose") begin the album on a dolorous note, but the light shines through by Side Two.

"All About Soul" expresses the strong connection between the singer and his romantic partner.  "[So] many things getting out of control should drive her away/So why does she stay?" he asks with a note of sadness in the tough rocker, seemingly awestruck that she "gives me all the love I need to keep my faith alive."  That faith, too, is resolute in the bond between father and daughter as heard on the touching "Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)," performed by Joel on vocals and piano, supported only by Ira Newborn's gentle orchestration.  The title track is considerably more expansive, a gospel-tinged, spiritually-minded soul/R&B rave-up unlike anything Joel had composed before.  Its euphoric, life-affirming tone was far-removed from the indignation of "No Man's Land" and "The Great Wall of China."  Vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Crystal Taliefero, still an integral part of Joel's band today, arranged the background vocals and was among the singers lending both energy and gravitas.  "Two Thousand Years" threaded the needle further, offering earnest pleas for the next generation ("Without compassion, there can be no end to hate/No end to sorrow/Caused by the same endless fears/Why can't we learn from all we've been through/After two thousand years?") before the concluding "Famous Last Words."  It closes the album on a breezy, upbeat note despite its wistful message.

River of Dreams let Joel depart the pop scene on top; the multi-Grammy-nominated 5x Platinum seller topped the Billboard 200 and featured four hit singles including the top five "River of Dreams."  Joel might have been done with pop songwriting but he did return to the studio in 2001 for the album that provides a coda to The Vinyl Collection Vol. 2, Fantasies and Delusions.  Since his "retirement" from songwriting, Joel has said that he continues to compose instrumental pieces.  Fantasies is the only such release of those compositions.  Feeling his own skills weren't adequate to bring the works to life on solo piano, Joel enlisted young British-Korean pianist Hyung-ki Joo.  Unsurprisingly, these classically-inspired pieces overflow with melody in a traditional vein.  There's a delightful lightness of touch to "Waltz No. 1 (Nunley's Carousel)" and a contemplative beauty to "Air (Dublinesque)," the central theme of which could have easily been outfitted with lyrics.  Joel's approach is highly romantic and easy on the ear; it's not hard to imagine this album - a rare "classical" No. 1 on the Billboard 200 - inspiring listeners to seek out the music of Chopin, Liszt, or Joel's other influences.

Happily, Fantasies and Delusions doesn't close out The Vinyl Collection Vol. 2.  The main attraction here for collectors is the audio premiere of Live from Long Island on 3 LPs.  Recorded before an appreciative hometown audience at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York - Joel grew up about ten minutes away, in Levittown - at the arguable height of Joel's fame on December 29, 1982, the show was aired on HBO and issued on VHS but has never previously appeared in any audio-only format.

The concert captures Joel and his band - Liberty DeVitto, Doug Stegmeyer, Russell Javors, David Brown, Mark Rivera (then a recent replacement for Richie Cannata and still in the band today), and Dave LeBolt - in top, tight form.  Much of the setlist is still heard at the average Joel show today, save some relative rarities (the trippy "Scandinavian Skies," the Righteous Brothers homage "Until the Night," the closing "Souvenir").  And of course, "Piano Man" would never be dispatched today in the first half-hour.  But there's great fun to be had in the subtle ways Joel inhabits these songs, fresher in his consciousness and ours, with looseness and spirit (and the high notes that, Joel quipped, would desert him later in the decade).  As mixed by Jay Vicari and mastered by Ted Jensen under the supervision of producers Brian Ruggles and John Jackson, the sound is clean, vibrant, and pristine.

A garrulous host, Joel often reminds the audience that the show is being filmed.  He does a little Jimmy Durante impression, gives a shout-out to his sister Judy, promises that he's not going to play the entirety of the new album (The Nylon Curtain) when he knows everybody wants to hear "the old stuff," or romping on the piano through a few lines of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer."

The live versions most often closely resemble their studio counterparts, but that's what the audience came to hear, after all.  (Then-new recruit Mark Rivera particularly impresses, as does the always-in the pocket Liberty DeVitto.)  Joel wisely kept the ballads to a minimum for the arena crowd, but "Just the Way You Are" and "She Always a Woman" provide elegant respites within the brisk, energetic setlist.  "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" gets a particularly affectionate, jubilant reading while the solemn "Goodnight Saigon," dedicated to Billy's old high school friends who entered the service, has a gripping but unforced gravitas.  He cuts loose on "Stiletto" and a breakneck "Sometimes a Fantasy," and channels Bill Medley's husky timbre (and Bobby Hatfield's higher tones) for the dramatic "Until the Night."  Excellent as this vinyl presentation is, Live from Long Island is crying out for a CD/Blu-ray set much like the one afforded Live at Yankee Stadium last year.

The Vinyl Collection Vol. 2 is in the style of the first collection.  The squarebound, memorabilia-filled 64-page booklet beautifully designed by Edward ODowd has Rob Tannenbaum's liner notes based on interviews with the artist as well as a section for each album with full lyrics and Joel's commentary.  The sturdy box houses each LP in a replica jacket with period-appropriate Columbia labels.  (In a nice touch, Fantasies and Delusions gets a classic gray Masterworks label.)  If there's any disappointment in the packaging, it's that the 2LP Fantasies and 3LP Live from Long Island aren't housed in gatefolds, but rather in single-pocket sleeves.  Vinyl sources for this project were created from the original master tapes by Ted Jensen, who has also remastered all of the audio with subtlety and detail befitting the music.  None of the pressing problems which plagued the first volume of The Vinyl Collection appear to have marred this set; each disc was quiet and free of pops, clicks, and other such noise.

Rob Tannenbaum reminds us that Billy Joel is the sixth best-selling artist of all time and the third best-selling solo artist, with 150 million records sold, 33 consecutive top 40 hits, 23 Grammy nominations, and five wins.  He's more than just those numbers, though.  The body of work here - one which admittedly will spark nostalgia in any listener of a certain age - speaks to the timeless songcraft which will find Billy Joel occupying the same rarefied status as his own musical heroes.  Indeed, it's music that will last for the longest time.

The Vinyl Collection Vol. 2 is available now from Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada. As an Amazon associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.