Billy Joel on Columbia Records’ “biggest-selling album ever”

(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)

Fri 28 March 2025 19:30, UK

Art and chart might only be a ‘ch’ apart, but there are a million miles between them. Oddly enough, in their heyday, Columbia Records seemed to understand this concept more than any of their peers. They might have woven their way into pop culture thanks to titans of industry like Frank Sinatra, but A&R guys like John Hammond were also more than happy to take a punt on unseemly vagabonds like Bob Dylan.

A sense of artistry ran through the company from its very inception. It all started for Columbia back in 1989, when it was first opened as The Columbia Phonograph Company. It became the district’s leading merchant of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, producing its own catalogue of cylinder recordings to go along with it.

Within five years, it was going it alone, producing and selling its own phonographs and recording artists to make cylinder music to go along with it. With business booming, it soon contracted the biggest Broadway stars of the day and set about launching a musical empire of the greatest prestige. Along the way, it moved the industry on from cylinder to vinyl disc recordings and began shaping the inclusive culture of today.

By the mid-1970s, everyone from the aforementioned Dylan and Sinatra to Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Paul Simon, Patsy Cline, Bruce Springsteen, Mahalia Jackson, Leonard Bernstein, and Janis Joplin, to name just a few. They were pivotal in pioneering stereo sound, and their catalogue was wildly expansive. They might have missed out on some of the biggest hits of the day, but there was no doubting the importance of the institution.

What is the best-selling Columbia Records album?

(Credits: Far Out / Columbia Records)

Then Billy Joel happened. At first, it seemed he would be another paradigm of the chart and art disparity. Like Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ before him, which peaked at a disappointing 60 in the US, and the Velvet Underground before that, who never made it beyond 171 in any chart, Joel appeared destined to be one of the many great artists who never achieve commercial success.

His first four albums had all struggled to make any major dents in the charts. The Stranger looked like it would follow this unfortunate trend. It entered the charts at a disappointing 181. Neither Joel nor anyone at Columbia expected what came next. From humble beginnings, singles like ‘Just The Way You Are’ and ‘She’s Always a Woman’ began to receive widespread radio play, and the public heard murmurings from the man himself that ‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’ was a masterpiece that didn’t quite match the mould of a conventional single.

For the first time, there was a bit of widespread buzz surrounding Joel. Suddenly, The Stranger rose up from 181 to lofty heights. Four months after its release, it became a huge success, ultimately spending a total of 17 weeks in varying positions within the top ten. It lingered continually thereafter, racking up further sales. So, by the time Joel sat down with David Sheff in 1982 for a Playboy interview, it had surpassed all the big hits by Dylan and Sinatra and was Columbia’s “biggest-selling album” ever.

What did Billy Joel make of The Strangers‘ success?

When asked to comprehend the fact that it had surpassed 10million sales, Joel remained as modest as ever. “I can’t grasp it,” he said. “I know something must have happened because I’ve got this house, these motorcycles, but I can’t grasp 10,000,000 people. I can’t grasp 10,000,000 anything.”

He also reflected that he has never been the sort of artist who viewed ‘biggest’ and ‘best’ as synonymous. “It sounds good,” he conceded regarding the lucrative Columbia accolade, “but think about it: What does it have to do with anything? Did Jimi Hendrix, who I think made some of the best albums ever, have the biggest-selling albums on his label? Does biggest equal best? I just can’t think in those terms.”

In fact, he was positive that the only reason The Stranger surpassed some of its predecessors so resoundingly was simply that he had written a peaceable single to launch the record. ‘Just The Way You Are’ became a gargantuan hit. Joel reflects, “I was just saying, ‘I love you just the way you are’. Simple. It was a normal thing to say. I think I’m normal, not a particular innovator, and that takes people by surprise. It’s good to hear it’s OK to be human.”

He added: “Maybe there’s a lot of pressure not to be the way we are: that I can’t love you unless you change. I’m OK, you suck. Who wants to hear that all the time? I’m not trying to be a preacher or deliver a message. I say what everybody says, but people find it a revelation to hear it: ‘Oh, wow, I’ve thought of that!’ What most people consider mundane, I consider romantic.”

As a songwriter, he had hit upon something resonant by avoiding viewing the subject of love as a songwriter. In truth, this had always been the secret to his brilliance—he was honest. So, while his earlier records might have flopped, they did so because of the same virtues that governed his future successes. Maybe this is why he was so humble about the Columbia feat, too—he knew sales were reflective of little more than strange societal happenstance and not a lot more.

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