Stranger, The (Limited Deluxe Edition/Remastered & Expanded/+DVD) [Digipak] - Billy Joel

Advantages: A fantatic collection of unreleased, rare and alternate recordings
Disadvantages: Really only one for previous Joel fans

...The Christmas gift I'd always wanted arrived fresh from www.Play.com yesterday just in time for the big day! For dedicated Joel fans like me, this latest box set is the one we've all been waiting for. The box set contains no less than 4 CDs and 1 DVD as well as a mini-book. The CDs contain masses of Joel treasures that have never before seen the light of day, demos, unreleased recordings, some live recordings and some alternate versions of songs. The disks take you through 30 years of Billy Joel's song-writing, giving you real insight into how songs were formed and of the changing musical styles of the artist. COST: As the box-set has just come onto the market as of November 29th (UK release date) which means it is still selling at £25.99. There are copies selling in the States (via the internet) for about £18 but by the time you add... Read review

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Advantages: Most of Billy Joel's best-known songs are here in one user-friendly package, likely to appeal to casual fans
Disadvantages: Now that a more complete retrospective is available, the fact it only covers up to 1985 counts against it slightly

..., and a creative triumph, An Innocent Man featured many of his best-known (and most-loved) songs - Uptown Girl (glorious Motown), Tell Her About It (ditto), and The Longest Time (assured a-capella Doo-wop harmonies). An Innocent Man stayed on the charts for nigh on 2 years, by which time this compilation was ready for release, embellished by two fresh recordings - the breezy You're Only Human, and the slightly cumbersome ballad The Night Is Still Young. It was an odd move at the time to release his "Greatest Hits Volume 1" and "Greatest Hits Volume 2" as one package...14 years without a Billy Joel collection, and then two joined together. The likelihood of such a thing nowadays would be extremely remote, to say the least. 21 hits over two discs left several other outstanding songs out in the cold (some of them would eventually crop up on a Limited-edition... Read review

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Advantages: A classic album
Disadvantages: Atmospheric rather than packed with adrenalin

...done by The Edge, all you need to know is that it contains the tracks "I still haven't found what I'm looking for", "Where the streets have no name" and "With or without you", as well as "Bullet the blue sky", plus "Trip through your wires", my favourite song in the world at the time. For those with cash to spare, U2 can extract it in lots of ways with the packaging for this reissue: standard cd featuring liner notes, lyrics and unseen photographs; a double 12" gatefold vinyl, with the original album pressed across two 180 gram audiophile discs (whoopee doop, though my original and by-now battered copy of the vinyl release needs replacing); a deluxe edition including a second cd of b-sides and demos from the original album sessions, and a limited edition box set containing two cds and a dvd featuring "The Joshua tree" tour live from... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful