World-beloved American singer-songwriter and "Piano Man" Billy Joel is back at the keys, releasing his first comeback single after 17 years: "Turn the Lights Back On," a piano ballad that is planned to hit all major streaming platforms at the start of February.
Billy Joel as photographed by Phonogram for their "Latest Artists" feature in Sept. 13, 1972.
Billy Joel Returns to the Spotlight with 'Turn the Lights Back On'
The upcoming single will be under Columbia Records and will also be available as a 7-inch vinyl record. Orders for physical copies can be expected to be shipped out by Jan. 31.
The track itself is a collaborative work between Joel and Freddy Wexler, an American music producer with credits on songs by pop-icons like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber.
Two other co-writers worked with Joel and Wexler, one of whom is British songwriter Wayne Hector, the man behind Westlife's numerous chart-toppers among others.
This release marks Joel's first new solo project since 2007 when he made "All My Life" And "Christmas in Fallujah," and was first teased in the artist's official TikTok account last December. In that video, he said: "We got a little something we're working on you might hear sometime."
That 'sometime' he was referring to was today, Jan. 23, formally announcing on his Instagram the would-be release of his new single, which also included a small snippet of what sounded like the song's intro part.
However, the post did not clarify whether the song will be a one-off release, or whether it is just the first of other new singles or even an album, something he also has not released in the past two decades. In fact, his last album launch was his 1993 chart-topping pop project, "River of Dreams."
In an interview with Vulture, Joel delved into why he stopped writing songs for a while, saying: "I couldn't be as good as I wanted and that was driving me crazy. I was driving my loved ones crazy. I thought, this is ridiculous. So I stopped."
That said, he continued performing live, even playing in New York's Madison Square Garden for at least once a month starting from January 2014. Aside from the new release, Joel will also be celebrating and retiring from his now 10-year residency at the Square this coming July.
Outside of this, he also continues to tour in both domestic and international settings, with his upcoming tour dates including the cities of Tokyo, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa, and Chicago.
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