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Album
Cornerstone
Styx →152,876 listeners965,274 plays
classic rockrockprogressive rocksoft rockhard rock
about this album
Cornerstone is the ninth studio album by Styx, released in 1979 (see 1979 in music). Cornerstone was Styx's follow-up to their second consecutive Top 10 selling Triple Platinum album in a row, 1978's Pieces of Eight. Like the four previous Styx albums, the band produced the album themselves. The band started using a new recording studio Pumpkin Studios in Oak Lawn, Illinois. The album was the first where the band shied away from the art-rock/prog-rock influences that dominated their first eight studio albums and was the band's first move towards a more pop/rock direction (band member Dennis DeYoung stated in a 2009 interview that the change in direction came from reading bad reviews that the group received in the rock press while on their first tour of England). Dennis DeYoung had two ballads on the album. The first was the album's first single and Styx's only US #1 single "Babe" which Dennis wrote for his wife Suzanne. The track was performed and recorded as a demo with just him and the Panozzo brothers but then James Young and Tommy Shaw heard the track and decided to put it on Cornerstone with Shaw overdubbing a guitar solo in the song's middle section. Another ballad was the power ballad "First Time" which was intended to be Cornerstone's second single (radio stations were playing it and got such a response that A&M wanted it released) until Shaw complained and threatened to leave the band. "Borrowed Time" was released instead, reaching a disappointing #63 on the charts.
