Billy Joel "Glass Houses [USA, 2010 Audio Fidelity HDCD Gold AFZ 092]"

Glass Houses is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Billy Joel, released on March 12, 1980. It features Joel's first song to peak at No. 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 No. 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 U.S. 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. This was also the final studio album to feature the original incarnation (Joel, Richie Cannata, Doug Stegmeyer, Russell Javors and Liberty DeVitto) of the Billy Joel Band, augmented by new lead guitarist David Brown. Multi-instrumentalist Cannata left the band just before the sessions began for Joel's next studio album, 1982's The Nylon Curtain.

This album was the third collaboration between Joel and producer Phil Ramone, following The Stranger and 52nd Street and the final such collaboration in association with Home Run.

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 Joel 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".

Track listing

All songs written by Billy Joel.

1. "You May Be Right" 4:15
2. "Sometimes a Fantasy" 3:40
3. "Don't Ask Me Why" 2:59
4. "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" 2:57
5. "All for Leyna" 4:15
6. "I Don't Want to Be Alone" 3:57
7. "Sleeping with the Television On" 3:02
8. "C'était Toi (You Were the One)" 3:25
9. "Close to the Borderline" 3:47
10. "Through the Long Night" 2:43

Phil Ramone – producer

Jim Boyer – engineer

Bradshaw Leigh – assistant engineer

Ted Jensen – mastering at Sterling Sound (New York, NY).

Brian Ruggles – technician

Steve Cohen – lighting

Jim Houghton – photography

Michele Slagter – production assistant

Jeff Schock – product management