Billy Joel's pop schmaltz occupies a stylistic no man's land where musical and lyric truisms borrowed from disparate sources are forced together. A talented keyboardist, Joel's piano style creditably imitates early Elton John, while Joel's melodic and vocal attacks owe something to Harry Chapin. Joel's lyrics also seem Chapin-influenced in their appeal to Middle American sentimentality. "Piano Man" and "Captain Jack," the centerpieces of Joel's last album, compelled attention for their despairing portraits of urban fringe life, despite their underlying shallowness. By contrast, Streetlife Serenade is desiccated of ideas. The opening cut, "Streetlife Serenader," fails to develop a melody or lyrical theme. "Los Angelenos" presents a hackneyed picture postcard of L.A. as sexual wasteland. "The Great Suburban Showdown" seems even more dated than its apparent inspiration, The Graduate. In "The Entertainer," a spinoff from Chapin's "WOLD," Joel screams homilies about the callousness of the music business. Joel's keyboard abilities notwithstanding, he has nothing to say as a writer at present. Two instrumental trifles, "Root Beer Rag" and "The Mexican Connection," provide nothing more than filler.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"