Streetlife Serenade may be one of the more unusual – and perhaps overlooked – albums in Joel’s celebrated catalogue. His third album (and second for longtime home base Columbia Records), it followed the modest breakthrough of 1973’s Piano Man with a similar formula to its predecessor. Working again with producer Michael Stewart and a team of Los Angeles session musicians, Joel later admitted the difficulty of recording a follow-up album with an admittedly thinner notebook of songs, so occupied had he been touring in support of Piano Man – at one point opening for The Beach Boys. Consequently, the album boasts not one but two instrumentals: the dexterous “Root Beer Rag” and the offbeat closer “The Mexican Connection.” The remaining songs furthered Joel’s…

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