If Styx didn't do enough to endear itself to a generation of prom-goers with its 1975 slow-dance classic "Lady," they closed the deal a few years later with Cornerstone's premiere hit, "Babe." Perhaps the prototypical I-love-you-but-I-just-gotta-go power ballad, the song was Styx's first No. 1 hit, and it propelled the album to platinum-plus status. Led by that track as well as "Why Me," another Top 40 hit, Cornerstone is Styx at their most accessible and melodic. The album experiments with some new sounds as well, with horns added to the mix on Dennis DeYoung's "Borrowed Time" and "Why Me" and mandolin on Tommy Shaw's "Boat on the River." If their album sales didn't offer the final word on the band's popularity at the close of the '70s, a 1979 Gallup poll did the trick: The group was named America's most popular rock band. It's you babe, indeed. --Daniel Durchholz

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