Billy Joel Announces Release of First New Single in Decades

Billy Joel speaks as MSG Entertainment and Billy Joel make a special franchise announcement at Chase Square at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 1, 2023. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Billy Joel, 74, announced on Monday the release of his first single in nearly two decades.

“It’s time to TURN THE LIGHTS BACK ON,” Mr. Joel wrote in a post on X, along with a tease of the song. “Brand new single coming February 1st.”

“Turn the Lights Back On” will drop on streaming services on Feb. 1, and will also be released on limited-edition 7-inch vinyl,” according to the official Billy Joel website. The track will be accompanied by a lyric video on the legendary singer-songwriter’s official YouTube channel.

Last month, the “Piano Man” hinted to fans that he had been working on a “little something” at one of his shows as part of his Madison Square Garden residency, which wraps in July after 10 years of record-breaking sold-out shows.

“I have good news. I have bad news. I'll give you the bad news first,” Mr. Joel told the audience. “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’ve got a little something we’ve been working on you might hear sometime.”

Mr. Joel co-wrote the song with Arthur Bacon, Wayne Hector, and Freddy Wexler, who produced the song. Mr. Wexler has worked with a number of artists, including Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, the Jonas Brothers, and Selena Gomez, among others.

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The song is described as a “classic Billy Joel-style tune, embodying the hallmarks of signature sound and ushering in the next chapter of his story.”

In the lyrics, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee asks, “Did I wait too long... to turn the lights back on?”

In February 2007, Mr. Joel released “All My Life”, a song written as an anniversary gift for his then-wife, Katie Lee.  The ballad reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Singles Sales chart. Later that year, he released “Christmas in Fallujah” with Cass Dillon.

Three years ago, Mr. Joel explained why he had stopped writing music with lyrics.

“You have to want to. You have to have the desire to write songs. I love music, so I never stopped writing music. It’s instrumental music,” Mr. Joel told Howard Stern during a 2021 interview. “But I stopped writing lyrics because I got tired of that particular format.”

“To me, music is enough now, and I became more comfortable with abstract form,” he continued. “But if I had an idea for a song, I’m not going to stop myself. I just haven’t had the desire to do it.”

Mr. Joel went on to say that writing lyrics “can be a grind.”

“Sometimes I look at the piano, and it’s this big black beast with 88 teeth that wants to bite my fingers off,” he said, adding that trying and not being able to write a song is “the most frustrating feeling in the world.”

When Mr. Joel wrote the “New York State of Mind,” he said it poured out of him in about 20 minutes on a bus ride in 1975 after he returned to New York after spending three years in Los Angeles.

But the words don’t always come that easy, he explained.

“The worst thing about songwriting is the struggle,” Mr. Joel told Mr. Stern. “I love having written, but I hate writing.”

Mr. Joel has sold more than 150 million records and scored 33 top-40 hits over his career. His last studio album, “Fantasies and Delusions” was released on Sony Classical in 2001.

It is not yet clear whether his new single will be a one-off or part of a larger compilation.