The Nylon Curtain

The Nylon Curtain is the eighth studio album by American singer-songwriter Billy Joel, released on September 23, 1982, and produced by Phil Ramone.

The Nylon Curtain peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard albums chart, with two million sales in the U.S. It was one of the first albums to be digitally recorded, mixed, and mastered.^{[citation needed]}

The album is among Joel's most ambitious efforts. Joel has called it "the recording I'm most proud of and the material I'm most proud of." When he recorded the album, he said in an interview, he aimed to "create a sonic masterpiece". Joel spent more time in the studio, crafting the sound of the album, than he had on any previous album a process said was "exhausting". Critics have interpreted the album to be, in part, an homage to the music of the Beatles and the then-recently deceased John Lennon.

Saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist Richie Cannata left the band before recording, so Joel, bassist Doug Stegmeyer, drummer Liberty DeVitto and guitarists David Brown and Russell Javors recorded the album mostly by themselves, thus making it Joel's first album since Streetlife Serenade not to feature a regular saxophonist, although Eddie Daniels plays clarinet on the closing track "Where's the Orchestra?" alongside Charles McCracken on cello and Dominic Cortese on accordion. Saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist Mark Rivera, formerly of the band Tycoon, joined the band on The Nylon Curtain Tour.

Regarding the album's themes, Joel has stated, "It was during the Reagan years, and the diminishing horizons in America at the time [meant that] all of a sudden you weren't going to be able to inherit [the kind of life] your old man had." This pessimism about the American dream, in Joel's view, permeates most of the songs on the album. Joel also said that the theme of the album was "an American dilemma, specifically of people born after World War II." He said that although he doesn't provide solutions to the dilemma, he "hope[d] the record speaks like someone in that age group, if only just to tie us all together as people, as an entity".

Pop-culture journalist Chuck Klosterman praised songs from the album, specifically "Laura" and "Where's the Orchestra?", in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

Joel said in an interview that most of the songs on the album were written in the same sequence in which they appear on the album. The album's production schedule was slightly thrown off near the end of production because Joel had a motorcycle accident.

The album opens with "Allentown", which is actually about the nearby town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Bethlehem, largely based in the production of steel for automobiles, was experiencing economic difficulties amid the early 1980s recession that affected the steel industry. Joel wrote the melody for "Allentown" eight years before he completed the lyrics for inclusion on The Nylon Curtain.