Consumer Guide Album

Billy Joel: The Bridge [Columbia, 1986]
Maybe his youthful lyricism, meaning his knack for the tearjerker, is abandoning him. On Greatest Hits "Just the Way You Are" and "She's Always a Woman" are every bit as alive as "Movin' Out" and "Allentown," but here he's best when he's brassy and literal: failed wise guy in "Big Man on Mulberry Street," Ray Charles's coequal on "Baby Grand." And even at his most rockin' he's seventy-five years retro whether he likes it or not--whenever he doesn't hit it just right you want to quarantine him for life in Atlantic City. B