“Allentown” by Billy Joel

"Allentown" opens The Nylon Curtain, Billy Joel's 1982 album on Columbia, and it was the record's second single: a protest song about the rust belt going to seed, sung for working people watching their prospects dry up. Phil Ramone produced, Jim Boyer engineered and mixed, and Joel's band plays it tough, with Liberty DeVitto on drums, Doug Stegmeyer on bass, and David Brown and Russell Javors on guitars around Joel's piano.

It came with a conceptual video, sat at No. 17 on the Hot 100 for six straight weeks and went gold, but its real life came later, as it grew into a blue-collar anthem for working America, hopes and frustrations both. It has kept turning up on his albums ever since, from Greatest Hits: Volume II to Live at Shea Stadium.

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