OK, gang, I asked this of Cecil recently, and he told me to rely on you folks. So here goes.
A friend of mine once noted, while watching a documentary on Billy Joel, that Joel’s 52nd Street album was the first to be commercially available in the new (at the time) compact disc format. However, another of my friends who overheard the comment immediately responded that it was a Bruce Springsteen album, Born in the USA, which was the first. Given the love each of these people has for their respective artist, an argument quickly broke out, as apparently the “First Album on CD” is a prize that, unbeknownst to me, has been argued over before. I have tried to research which of my friends is correct, leaning towards the Billy Joel album (as that had always been the one cited to me; I’d never heard the Springsteen argument), but I was only able to find claims on both sides, and never any (to me, anyway) concrete proof. I have heard that Bruce Springsteen’s album was “First Album Pressed on CD In the US”, as opposed to Billy Joel’s, which was “First Album Pressed on CD in the World”. It seems like a silly argument (they’re both good albums), but could you help settle this issue once and for all?
