Billy Joel - Just the Way You Are (Live 1977)

What this video is

Released as the second single from The Stranger (1977), 'Just the Way You Are' marked Billy Joel's commercial breakthrough, becoming his first US Top 10 and UK Top 20 hit and his first Gold single. It topped the Billboard Easy Listening Chart for the entirety of January 1978 and won Grammy Awards for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1979. The decision to use a live performance as the official music…

Why it matters

A canonical document of the 1970s singer-songwriter/soft rock crossover at its commercial apex. The unedited live format situates the clip within a lineage of performance-first music documentation predating the constructed music video era. The song itself is widely cited as a pop standard and a…