The Essential Billy Joel (2001)


 

Disc One
  1. Piano Man
  2. You're My Home
  3. Captain Jack
  4. The Entertainer
  5. Say Goodbye to Hollywood
  6. Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on 
     Broadway)
  7. New York State of Mind
  8. She's Always a Woman
  9. Movin Out (Anthony's Song)
  10.Only the Good Die Young
  11.Just the Way You Are
  12.Honesty
  13.My Life
  14.It's Still Rock and Roll to Me
  15.You May Be Right
  16.Don't Ask Me Why
  17.She's Got a Way
  18.Allentown
  
Disc Two
  1. Goodnight Saigon
  2. An Innocent Man
  3. Uptown Girl
  4. The Longest Time
  5. Tell Her About It
  6. Leave a Tender Moment Alone
  7. A Matter of Trust
  8. Baby Grand
  9. I Go To Extremes
  10.We Didn't Start the Fire
  11.Leningrad
  12.The Downeaster "Alexa"
  13.And So it Goes
  14.The River of Dreams
  15.All About Soul (Remix)
  16.Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)
  17.Waltz No.1 (Nunley's Carousel)
  18.Invention in C Minor

 

Another compilation. Another attempt to draw the map of a career already well-charted. The Essential Billy Joel arrives with the quiet inevitability of rain in autumn—expected, familiar, not unwelcome, but unlikely to change the weather.

This two-disc set is, by design, a streamlined alternative to the Complete Hits Collection—that four-disc monument of the 1990s which bundled Volumes I, II, and III with a revealing bonus disc of interviews and live cuts. Where that set sought to be definitive, The Essential settles for representative. It does its job with workmanlike efficiency, offering a reasonably balanced cross-section of Joel’s catalogue—from the saloon-piano swagger of Piano Man to the windswept maturity of And So It Goes.

As with any such retrospective, the intrigue lies in what’s present and what’s absent. There are choices here that baffle—fan-favorites shuffled aside for deeper cuts, and a few too many nods to the classical material from Fantasies & Delusions, which, while noble in artistic intent, feels oddly shoehorned into a career-spanning collection intended for casual or nostalgic listeners. It’s a little like ending a rock retrospective with Gregorian chant: admirable, but alienating.

Moments of brilliance—Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, The Downeaster Alexa, Vienna—float to the surface nonetheless, reminding us why Joel occupies the rare air of pop stardom with the durability of a songwriter’s soul.

And yet, one cannot shake the sense that this set exists more for commerce than commemoration. It’s not a celebration; it’s a reprint. One suspects that even Joel himself, ever candid in interviews, would greet this release with a bemused shrug. By this stage, the legacy requires no new packaging.

The Essential Billy Joel is not essential in the sense that it’s necessary, but in the marketing sense of the word—a curated primer, solidly built, ultimately redundant for those who already know the catalog, and possibly frustrating for those who wish to go deeper.

In the end, it’s less a record than a reminder: the songs are still there, still magnificent, even if the casing feels a touch perfunctory.

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