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"&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;apos;t care what consequence it brings,&amp;quot; sings Billy Joel in &amp;quot;The Longest Time,&amp;quot; an acapella number from his soul music tribute album, &lt;em&gt;An Innocent Man.&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;I have been a fool for lesser things.&amp;quot; Well, yes. One need only think back to the brattish pedantry he pawned off as rock sensibility on &lt;em&gt;Glass Houses&lt;/em&gt;, an LP whose &amp;quot;rock&amp;quot; sounded more like something Joe Piscopo&amp;apos;s Frank Sinatra would sing than the real thing. Unlike that record, &lt;em&gt;An Innocent Man&lt;/em&gt; sounds like the real thing, or at least a real celebration of it. As Joel strolls through the archives of soul, his writerly eye hones in on one style after another until &lt;em&gt;An Innocent Man&lt;/em&gt; becomes a panoramic overview of what it must have been like to be a Long Island kid with an ear glued to the radio during the golden dawn of rock and soul and doo-wop.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;wm:embed type=\"related\"&gt;&lt;/wm:embed&gt;&lt;p&gt;Without missing a bomp, Joel manages to swing from the Wilson Pickett/James Brown and the Famous Flames-type raunch of &amp;quot;Easy Money&amp;quot; to the overdubbed Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers-style acapella of &amp;quot;The Longest Time&amp;quot; to, most uncanny of all, a perfectly realized mimicry of the Four Seasons&amp;apos; unfathomable falsetto pop-soul, entitled &amp;quot;Uptown Girl.&amp;quot; Along the way, he passes under the boardwalk to the Drifters&amp;apos; loping gait (&amp;quot;An Innocent Man&amp;quot;), takes a figurative spin through the Philly-soul district (&amp;quot;Tell Her About It&amp;quot;) and turns his gaze southward, tipping his hat to various personages in Atlantic Records&amp;apos; celebrated Soul Clan, particularly Ben E. King.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;The only wrong note sounded here is &amp;quot;Keeping the Faith,&amp;quot; the album&amp;apos;s postscript, wherein he assures us, unnecessarily, that by resurrecting these styles, he&amp;apos;s not committing an act of nostalgia, and reminds us that &amp;quot;the good old days weren&amp;apos;t always so good/And tomorrow isn&amp;apos;t as bad as it seems.&amp;quot; An optimistic note on which to end the album, I suppose, but the self-justification somewhat abruptly breaks the mood of soulful reverie he&amp;apos;s built up on the preceding nine songs. Still, I can find no other reason to be cynical about a record that&amp;apos;s so plainly a labor of love. &lt;em&gt;An Innocent Man&lt;/em&gt; is an affectionate, spirited paean to an undefiled past that&amp;apos;s truly forever.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/an-innocent-man-19830818>