Background
The album is among Joel's most ambitious albums, and Joel has openly acknowledged that it's one of his personal favorites, calling it "the recording I'm most proud of and the material I'm most proud of." When he recorded the album, he said in an interview that he wanted to "create a sonic masterpiece." So he spent more time in the studio, crafting the sound of the album, than he had on any previous album.He said that the process of making the album was "exhausting." Critics have interpreted the album to be, in part, an homage to the music of The Beatles and John Lennon.
Regarding the album's themes, Joel has stated "It was during the Reagan years, and the diminishing horizons in America at the time all of a sudden you weren't going to be able to inherit your old man had." This pessimism about the American dream, in Joel's view, permeates most of the songs on the album.
The song "Allentown", which brought attention to the plight of America's declining steel industry, spent an unprecedented six weeks at No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1983. It was one of the most played radio songs of the early 1980s, along with another Top 20 hit "Pressure".
Pop-culture journalist Chuck Klosterman praised songs from the album, specifically "Laura" and "Where's the Orchestra?," in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.
Read more about this topic: The Nylon Curtain
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)