Released March 10, 1980 Genre Rock
new wave Producer Phil Ramone | Recorded 1979 Length 35:06 | |
Label Family Productions/Columbia | ||
Glass Houses is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Billy Joel, released on March 10, 1980. It features Joel's first song to peak at #1 on Billboard's Pop Singles chart, "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me." The album itself topped the Pop Albums chart for six weeks and was ranked number 4 on Billboard's 1980 year-end album chart. The album is the 41st best selling album of the 1980s, with sales of 7.1 million copies in the US alone. In 1981, Joel won a Grammy Award for "Best Male Rock Vocal Performance" for his work on Glass Houses. According to music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the album featured "a harder-edged sound" compared to Joel's other work, in response to the punk and new wave movements.
Contents
Background
This album was the third collaboration between Joel and producer Phil Ramone, following The Stranger and 52nd Street.
Opening with the sound of glass shattering, Glass Houses has more of a hard rock feel than Joel's previous albums. The cover shows Joel poised to throw a rock through the two-story window of his real-life waterfront glass house in Cove Neck. On some versions, the back cover shows Billy looking through the hole that the rock made in the glass. This alludes to the adage that "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."
In 2004, the pop-culture journalist and rock critic Chuck Klosterman praised the album in an essay on Joel titled "Every Dog Must Have His Every Day, Every Drunk Must Have His Drink" from his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (the title of the essay refers to a line from the Glass Houses song "Don't Ask Me Why") In particular, Klosterman praised some of the more obscure tracks from the album including "All for Leyna", "I Don't Want to Be Alone", "Sleeping with the Television On", and "Close to The Borderline."
Critical reception
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic wrote retrospectively: "It may not be punk -- then again, it may be his concept of punk -- but Glass Houses is the closest Joel ever got to a pure rock album." Rolling Stone critic Paul Nelson stated: "Billy Joel writes smooth and cunning melodies, and what many of his defenders say is true: his material's catchy. But then, so's the flu."
Track listing
All songs written by Billy Joel.
Side one
- "You May Be Right" – 4:15
- "Sometimes a Fantasy" – 3:40
- "Don't Ask Me Why" – 2:59
- "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" – 2:57
- "All for Leyna" – 4:15
Side two
- "I Don't Want to Be Alone" – 3:57
- "Sleeping with the Television On" – 3:02
- "C'était Toi (You Were the One)" – 3:25
- "Close to the Borderline" – 3:47
- "Through the Long Night" – 2:43