Boston: Don't Look Back (released 15 August 1978)

01 Don't Look Back (5:53)
02 The Journey (1:50)
03 It's Easy (4:23)
04 A Man I'll Never Be (6:40)
05 Feelin' Satisfied (4:30)
06 Party (4:04)
07 Used to Bad News (4:56)
08 Don't Be Afraid (3:44)



Boston is an American rock band formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1975. The band's core members include multi-instrumentalist, founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the band's 1976 self-titled debut album, and former lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album.

Don't Look Back is the second studio album by American rock band Boston, released in 1978 by Epic Records, as the band's last album on the label. The album reached No. 1 in both the US and Canada, and No. 9 in the UK. The title track helped with the album's success, reaching No. 4 in 1978 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and remains one of the band's biggest hits. The album sold over one million copies in the ten days following its release and was certified 7× platinum by the RIAA in the US on April 11, 1996.

The album's two-year gap from its predecessor marks the shortest between two of the band's studio albums to date; guitarist, producer and primary songwriter Tom Scholz claimed that Epic executives pushed him and the band into releasing the album before they felt it was ready. He also felt that the album "was ridiculously short". Their next album, Third Stage, was not released for another eight years, by which time the band and record label had parted ways and fought a courtroom battle that Boston ultimately won.

Billy Joel: The Stranger (released 29 September 1977)

01 Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)
02 The Stranger
03 Just the Way You Are
04 Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
05 Vienna
06 Only the Good Die Young
07 She's Always a Woman
08 Get it Right the First Time
09 Everybody Has a Dream
10 The Stranger (Reprise)

Before The Stranger, Billy Joel was on the verge of being dropped by his record label Columbia Records. After the unexpected success of Joel's second album, Piano Man, his subsequent albums were commercially disappointing. Turnstiles, Joel's 1976 release, had peaked at only number 122 on the Billboard 200 chart.

By 1976, Joel had formed a reliable touring band, consisting of Doug Stegmeyer on bass, Liberty DeVitto on drums and Richie Cannata on saxophone, flute, clarinet and organ. Joel grew to appreciate this group of musicians, finding that they had a high-energy, rough-around-the-edges feel that he hoped to capture in his studio recordings. Joel had mostly worked with session players for his first three studio albums, which contained only scattered contributions from his own backup musicians, and strongly disliked the polished sound of these albums. Joel sought a producer who could cultivate his desired style; a longtime fan of the Beatles, initially looked to famed Beatles producer George Martin. But after meeting with Joel, Martin expressed interest in producing the album, but did not want to use Joel's band, wishing instead to bring in session players. Joel, however, was adamant in his desire to record with his own band and declined Martin's offer. Ultimately, Joel turned to Phil Ramone, a veteran New York City sound engineer and record producer who had recently worked with Paul Simon, another singer-songwriter, on Simon's album Still Crazy After All These Years. According to Joel, he and Ramone met with each other at Fontana di Trevi, an Italian restaurant near Carnegie Hall, where Joel had been playing at the time. The restaurant would go on to inspire the setting of "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant", a song on The Stranger. According to Joel, Ramone expressed an appreciation for Joel's band and their energy, and understood the reasoning behind Joel's attitude towards recording, which ultimately led Joel to choose Ramone as the producer for his next album.The Stranger was well-received by critics, particularly in retrospect, with many considering it to display some of Joel's best-written material. 

In a contemporary review of the album, Ira Mayer of Rolling Stone deemed it an improvement over Joel's previous studio efforts, praising its musical variety and Ramone's production.

The Alan Parsons Project: I Robot (released 01 June 1977)

01 I Robot (6:02)
02 I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You (3:22)
03 Some Other Time (4:06)04 Breakdown (3:50)
05 Don't Let it Show (4:24)
06 The Voice (5:24)
07 Nucleus (3:31)
08 Day After Day (The Show Must Go On) 3:49
09 Total Eclipse (3:09)
10 Genesis Ch. 1 v. 32 (3:28)

The album was intended to be based on the "I, Robot" stories written by Asimov, and Eric Woolfson spoke with Asimov himself, who was enthusiastic about the idea. As the rights already had been granted to a TV/movie company, the album's title was altered slightly by removing the comma in "I,", and the theme and lyrics were made to be more generically about robots rather than to be specific to the Asimov universe. The cover inlay reads: "I Robot... The story of the rise of the machine and the decline of man, which paradoxically coincided with his discovery of the wheel... and a warning that his brief dominance of this planet will probably end, because man tried to create robot in his own image." The title of the final track, "Genesis Ch.1 v.32", follows this theme by implying a continuation to the story of Creation, since the first chapter of Genesis only has 31 verses.

Supertramp: Breakfast in America (released 29 March 1979)

01 Gone Hollywood (5:20)
02 The Logical Song (4:!0)
03 Goodbye Stranger (5:50)
04 Breakfast in America (2:39)
05 Oh Darling (3:49)
06 Take the Long Way Home (5:09)
07 Lord Is it Mine? (4:10)
08 Just Another Nervous Wreck (4:26)
09 Casual Conversations (2:59)
10 Child of Vision (7:26)

So Fine

Electric Light Orchestra (ELO): So Fine