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Billy Joel

Billy Joel and his girlfriend (and future wife and manager) Elizabeth Weber took off to Los Angeles, where he played in piano bars under the pseudonym Bill Martin. In 1973, good fortune finally stumbled into Joel's life in the form of a contract with Columbia Records; that year, he released Piano Man, which sold over a million copies. His next album, Streetlife Serenade, delivered up his first Top 40 hit, "The Entertainer," which articulates the bittersweet reality of a performer's life — something Joel was all too familiar with. In 1977, he broke through commercially in a big way. The Stranger went multi-platinum and yielded five huge hits, one of which, "Just the Way You Are," earned him a Grammy Award for Song of the Year. By the end of 1979, sales of The Stranger had surpassed the five-million mark. His follow-up albums, 52nd Street (1979), Glass Houses (1980), Songs in the Attic (1981), Nylon Curtain (1982), and An Innocent Man (1983) all went platinum. His subsequent releases, Greatest Hits, Volumes 1 & 2 (1985), The Bridge (1986), Kohuept (the record of his 1987 concert in Leningrad), Storm Front (1989), and the critically acclaimed River of Dreams (1993), have sustained his gilded winning streak.

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