Billy Joel's third album was created in a rush after the success of Piano Man, and it shows. Not that it's a bad album, it just suffers in comparison to its predecessor and its immediate successors.
Two of its ten songs are instrumentals. A few of them feel, well, not so much half-baked as undercooked. And it's weird becuase Billy had three songs he'd already been playing live - "Rosalinda," "Long Long Time," and "Josephine" - that didn't make the album (you can listen to live versions on the Piano Man Deluxe Edition).
Anyway, let's look at what is there.
One of the reasons Streetlife Serenade underwhelms is the dearth of hits, which is just not something you expect from Billy Joel. The album only had one single, "The Entertainer," which peaked at a respectable #34. It appears on most of his hits packages (though it wasn't on the vinyl version of Greatest Hits Vol I & II ).
A lack of hits isn't a problem if you have a lot of strong album tracks (like Turnstiles does), but that's just not the case here. "Los Angelenos" and "Streetlife Serenader" are the best of the bunch, and both got a second life on the 1981 live album Songs in the Attic. They're not on the Billy Joel A or B team, but they're defintiely on the C team.
The instrumentals are both enjoyable, as is the pretty, brief "Souvenir." The rest - "The Great Suburban Showdown," "Roberta," "Last of the Big Time Spenders," "Weekend Song" - are ones that even huge Billy fans are not screaming for in concerts.
In a 2022 critque of Streetlife Serenade, Billy said: "Interesting musical ideas, but nothing to say lyrically."
With the exception of "Weekend Song" (a generic soul rave-up with lyrics about suffering through the work day to get to Friday night) I respectfully disagree. The lyrics on the rest of the songs are generally intriguing, and the subject matter unusual. And in fact there are particular songs - "Last of the Big Time Spenders," "The Great Suburban Showdown," and "Souvenir" - where the music / arrangements let the lyrics down.
"Spenders" is seemingly autobiographical love song in which Billy pleads for his partner to stick by him through the lean years. My main issue with it is that it spends about a minute as a piano ballad before becoming a pedal-steel driven honky tonk tune. I wish Billy had just committed fully to the latter. And "The Great Suburban Showdown" explores that very specific set of emotions that come along with returning home in those first few years after being on your own. It has a similar country feel to "Spenders," but for me the mood is ruined by the incongrous use of a Moog synthesizer at the beginning, middle, end end. "Souvenir," meanwhile, is an intriguing bit of philosophy about time and memory that comes in at only 2 minutes. In my mind, it needed perhaps another verse, a bridge, or a musical movement to really drive home its message.
The rest are well realized both lyrically and musically. "Roberta" features a narrator who's in love with a prostitute. It has a strong melody and funny lines such as, "I'd ask you over but I can't afford you." "Streetlife Serenader" has haiku-like verses in which Billy seems to express envy for the buskers who make music without promise of fame. That's closely related to the "The Entertainer," a scathing assessment of the vagaries of the music industry and the commidification of artists. "Los Angelenos" fortells Billy's discontent with living in LA, a topic which he'd explore more on Turnstiles, and gives us the great line "Los Angelenos all come from somewhere."
In all, we could accurately call
Streetlife Serenade a transitional album where Billy was still figuring out how to consistenly put everything - lyrics, music, arrangements, and performances - into place.
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