Just the Way You Are

Billy Joel wrote Just the Way You Are for his first wife Elizabeth and put it on The Stranger in 1977, where it became his first top ten single and won Grammys for Record and Song of the Year. Joel, whose father fled Nazi Germany and whose family lost its textile business in Nuremberg, almost left the song off the album until Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow heard it in the studio and insisted. The lyric asks for nothing to change, which is why couples who have been together a long time choose it, and the Fender Rhodes and saxophone solo by Phil Woods give the slow tempo warmth. It also topped the American easy listening chart in January 1978.