Cornerstone [Import]

Styx's ninth album Cornerstone was released in September of 1979. The album is best remembered for keyboardist/vocalist Dennis DeYoung's musical love-letter to his wife called Babe. This song was Styx's first and only No. 1 hit and it helped the band get their third album in a row to Triple Platinum status and the first Top 3 charting disc for the band(wouldn't be their last). Led by that track as well as the following Top 40 single, Dennis' classic about one's worries Why Me(which should have been Nancy Kerrigan's theme song from her attack), introduced us to horns which had not ever appeared on a Styx track prior to this. The album experiments with some new sounds as well. Guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw's Boat on the River was a great folk song which showed Tommy was not just full of rock music(like he claimed on Behind the Music). Dennis and Tommy co-wrote the opening Lights which had Tommy on vocal and the hard rocking Borrowed Time which had Dennis on vocal and one of his best rock vocals ever and was the opening song on the Cornerstone tour in 1979. Dennis also contributed the ballad First Time, which would have been a hit had if Tommy not complained like a 2-year old by threatening to walk out if it was released. First Time would have been a #1. Guitarist James "JY" Young wrote the scathing rocker Eddie about Edward kennedy, the last of the Kennedy sons. Tommy also had the melodic Never Say Never and the closing epic Love in the Midnight which started as a Crystal Ball part two but turns into one of the best Styx tracks ever with a blazing JY solo. Many fans scoff at this album but I like it alot, even today and still sounds great 25 years after its release. I highly recommend Cornerstone!

"Cornerstone" was Styx's most popular album, based mostly upon the song "Babe," the band's only number one hit and the song that was unfortuately the father (or mother?) of the "power ballad," that would dog rock radio unmercifully throughout the 1980s until Nirvana more or less deservedly put it to sleep. The song is of the kind that you either love or you hate. How you feel about it will probably affect how you feel about this whole album.

Unlike the two loose "conceptual" albums ("Grand Illusion" and "Pieces of Eight") that preceeded it, "Conerstone" is instead merely a collection of songs with no real underlying theme. As such, it is truly a mixed bag, and overall is weaker that its predecessors and the superior "Paradise Theater" that camer after it. Things start out promisingly, with Tommy Shaw's decent rocker "Lights" and a less bombastic Dennis DeYoung song "Why Me." Then comes "Babe," and the album never recovers, as shown by the fact that none of the rest of the material appears on any of Styx's numerous anthology albums.

Overall, this onetime smash success is now for diehard fams only.

Styx's ninth album Cornerstone was released in September of 1979. The album is best remembered for keyboardist/vocalist Dennis DeYoung's musical love-letter to his wife called Babe. This song was Styx's first and only No. 1 hit and it helped the band get their third album in a row to Triple Platinum status and the first Top 3 charting disc for the band(wouldn't be their last). Led by that track as well as the following Top 40 single, Dennis' classic about one's worries Why Me(which should have been Nancy Kerrigan's theme song from her attack), introduced us to horns which had not ever appeared on a Styx track prior to this. The album experiments with some new sounds as well. Guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw's Boat on the River was a great folk song which showed Tommy was not just full of rock music(like he claimed on Behind the Music). Dennis and Tommy co-wrote the opening Lights which had Tommy on vocal and the hard rocking Borrowed Time which had Dennis on vocal and one of his best rock vocals ever and was the opening song on the Cornerstone tour in 1979. Dennis also contributed the ballad First Time, which would have been a hit had if Tommy not complained like a 2-year old by threatening to walk out if it was released. First Time would have been a #1. Guitarist James "JY" Young wrote the scathing rocker Eddie about Edward kennedy, the last of the Kennedy sons. Tommy also had the melodic Never Say Never and the closing epic Love in the Midnight which started as a Crystal Ball part two but turns into one of the best Styx tracks ever with a blazing JY solo. Many fans scoff at this album but I like it alot, even today and still sounds great 25 years after its release. I highly recommend Cornerstone!