Bob’s Jukebox: Glass Houses

A while back, a good friend of mine (Dr. Pat) used to spend every Friday night doing what he called a “Full Album Flashback”. He would listen to an entire album (and when was the last time you even SAW an entire album?), and he would post his thoughts on the Book of Faces. I was intrigued by the idea and thought I would like to brazenly steal it for myself borrow it and give credit where credit is due. So, thank you Dr. Pat for the inspiration for Bob’s Jukebox.

What is that exactly? Well, I have an old collection of CDs sitting around, roughly 300 or so, that I haven’t really listened to in a decade or longer, and I thought now’s as good a time as any. I also know for a fact I bought at least some *cough*most*cough* of them for only a few songs at best. So actually taking the time to listen to the entire album will be a new experience for me. Good? Bad? Indifferent? We’ll find out together!

I decided the perfect album to kick this off with was the first “real” album I can ever remember listening to, Glass Houses by Billy Joel. I suppose there’s a certain synchronicity that the first album I started Bob’s Jukebox with is also, completely unintentionally, the first album I used to start The Soundtrack of My Life. Hopefully in the future I’ll manage to be a little less predictable, but I somehow doubt it.

Before I get into my specific thoughts on this album, I think it is worth mentioning that I consider Billy Joel to be on a special tier of artists who can’t be fairly compared to other artists. When I say a particular Billy Joel album is “good” or “bad”, I am speaking in relation to other Billy Joel albums. I don’t honestly think there are any truly, objectively bad Billy Joel albums (although some do come close to being mediocre, and we’ll discuss those when we get to them).

Glass Houses is the seventh studio album from Billy Joel, which honestly surprised me when I looked it up. I’ll be discussing his other albums (at least some of them) in future posts but suffice to say I was more impressed with at least one of his earlier releases, significantly more in fact. I’ll let you guess in the comments which one that is (all of you except Dr. Pat, because he already knows for a fact which one it is). The lyrical ability he displays on this album is more clever than poignant or deep, with memorable hits such as “You May Be Right” and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” showing an ability to turn a clever phrase without significant depth, and “C’etait Toi (You Were the One)” honestly just feels like a failed attempt at looking sophisticated (really, an entire verse in French? Even worse, the same verse? I thought my teenage poetry was pompous, but damn.)

His great strength lies in storytelling, and the more relatable the story, the better the song. “All for Layna” and “I Don’t Want to Be Alone” are perfect examples of this, as is “Sleeping with the Television On” (which also does an excellent job of placing the album within a specific few decades within the US; listen to the song and if you know, you know.)

At this point he still is a young, perhaps not angry but definitely cynical man. How much you can relate to that may influence how much you enjoy his music. Also, it is to some extent of its place and time. There is no doubt that Billy Joel has a certain style, particularly early in his career, and while that style did evolve over time, on Glass Houses it is in full force and clearly on display. If you like that style, you’ll like this album. If you don’t, you won’t. It really is that simple. For myself, this still remains one of my top five Billy Joel albums, and arguably one of my top three. I freely admit nostalgia plays a certain role in that, but there honestly are no bad songs on the album (even “C’etait Toi”, for all that I love to give him shit for it), and only a couple of truly forgettable songs. The fact that a couple of my very favorite Billy Joel songs are on this album, along with some of his biggest hits (and no, they are not one and the same in this case; again, different albums yield different results) sets it high on my personal ranking.