Joel has always been an easy target for his arrogance, pretentiousness, hypocrisy, and on 52nd Street he's still showing them off. He talks tough to get the Warren Zevon fans ("Big Shot") and acts out his laughable misogyny ("Stiletto"), but he also wants to sweet-talk the teen-screamers ("Honesty"). And here he pretends to be this street-hip cat in with all the jazz players—"I've got a tab at Zanzibar," he boasts—but the all-important love interest intrudes—seems he's interested in the waitress…. No, you can't dig in too deeply. Whatever illusion there is of truth, beauty or significance, underneath it's only product.

But good, sometimes great product. There's nothing on 52nd Street as silly as "Angry Young Man" or boring as "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" or hokey as "She's Always a Woman" (but never a gerbil to me?)…. [On] the whole, the friction from Joel's pretensions...