"The Stranger" according to Joel, was written by him without any core themes in mind and could be open up to interpretation, though he stated that it could be seen as a song about a man with schizophrenia. While composing the song, Joel whistled the track's signature theme for Ramone, claiming that he needed to find an instrument to play it. Ramone told Joel that the whistling he did was perfect, and thus it was kept in the final recording. According to Joel in an interview with Today, the percussive rhythm used in the song came about while he was toying around with an Ace Tone Rhythm Ace drum machine, which contained a drum beat that he heard while scrolling through the machine's library of rhythm tracks. After hearing the beat, he thought that the rhythm would be nice to fool around with, and wrote the song shortly afterwards.

Purchase Here