Styx II by Styx

Styx II came out on Wooden Nickel in July 1973, and it's the sound of a Chicago band deciding to stop leaning on other people's songs. Their debut had been mostly covers; this time they wanted strong material of their own, with Dennis DeYoung pushing hardest. The original five are all here, DeYoung, James Young, John Curulewski and the brothers Chuck and John Panozzo, sliding between progressive ambition and hard-rock muscle.

The one everybody remembers is "Lady", which DeYoung wrote on his own about his wife Suzanne, first working it out at an electric piano out in the garage, then switching to acoustic piano. It was meant for the first album until Bill Traut held it back. It went nowhere in 1973, but after the band talked Chicago's WLS into spinning it again, it broke out nationally in 1975, climbed to number 6 and pulled the album into the top 20 with it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.