Billy Joel is making a comeback with first single in 17 years

Billy Joel, welcome back-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack! The legendary artist, who hasn’t released a true single since 2007, announced on Monday the release of a new song, “Turn The Lights Back On.” The new track is due out February 1 on streaming with an accompanying limited edition 7” vinyl. Joel also teased a possible video on Twitter/X, wherein he turns the page on his own “Famous Last Words” and dramatically plays the piano in low lighting.

Back in 1976, Joel wrote about seeing “the lights go out on Broadway” on the track “Miami 2017,” an apocalyptic vision of New York’s future. But the city is still standing, so why not “Turn The Lights Back On”? A press release for the new song (via Rolling Stone) describes the song as a “classic Billy Joel-style tune, embodying the hallmarks of his signature sound and ushering in the next chapter of his story. In the lyrics, he asks, ‘Did I wait too long… to turn the lights back on?’”

No word if the “next chapter” of Joel’s story includes a full-length album. The Grammy winner hinted at new music during a live show in late 2023, telling the crowd, “I have good news, I have bad news. I’ll give you the bad news first: We don’t have anything new to play for you. The good news is you don’t have to sit through something you have no idea what it is. Although…we got a little we’re working on, you might hear sometime.”

Joel had largely retired from songwriting after 1993’s River Of Dreams, barring two singles (“All My Life” and “Christmas in Fallujah”) in 2007. In 2018, he told Vulture that he stopped because he “couldn’t be as good as I wanted to be. I was always trying to feel like there was a real progression in my work, and eventually I realized I was only going to be X good. Because of that I knew I was going to beat myself up for not being better. So I stopped. That’s it.”

Joel continues to perform live (“I have the greatest job in the world. You get up there, you make a lot of noise, girls scream, and you get shitloads of money. Are you fucking kidding me?”), and will wrap up his monthly Madison Square Garden residency later this year after playing a record-breaking 150 shows at the venue. He also released an album of piano compositions, Fantasies & Delusions, in 2001. “I still write music,” he told Rolling Stone in 2019. “I just don’t record it, and they’re not in song form. It’s another kind of music altogether. It’s purely for my own edification. I don’t feel compelled to record it. I don’t feel compelled to make myself be relevant. Like I said, I lived the rock & roll life, and I’m not writing that anymore.”

“Turn The Lights Back On” was written by Joel, Arthur Bacon, Wayne Hector, and Freddy Wexler, who also produced the song. Wexler has produced for a laundry list of today’s biggest artists including Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Blackpink, Pink, Lil Wayne, Selena Gomez, and Celine Dion. We’ll see what he’s cooked up with Joel on February 1.