Billy Joel unveils gorgeous first new single in over a decade 'Turn The Lights Back On'

1 February 2024, 12:51 | Updated: 1 February 2024, 13:09

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Billy Joel has only released two new songs in the past 30 years.

Billy Joel has been a constant figure on stage in recent years, and not just at his record-breaking monthly residency at New York's Madison Square Garden.

He's rarely been in the studio though, and his last proper album came over three decades ago with 1993's River of Dreams.

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Joel released the standalone 'All My Life' and 'Christmas in Fallujah' in 2007, and said in 2018 that he had given up writing songs for good.

He told Vulture: "When I stopped writing songs – it was time. 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.

"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."

Billy Joel - Turn the Lights Back On (Official Lyric Video)

All that has changed, and after teasing on stage and social media for the last few weeks, Joel has announced a newly-written single 'Turn The Lights Back On', which was released today (February 1).

The track is available via streaming and physically as a limited-edition 7" vinyl.

Listen below:

A snippet of video on Billy's social media channels show him playing what we can presume are a few instrumental bars of the track on the piano.

The lyrics contain the incredibly appropriate lyric: "Did I wait too long… to turn the lights back on?”.

The song has been written by Joel with Freddy Wexler, Arthur Bacon and Wayne Hector, and produced by Wexler.

There's every chance that UK fans will be able to hear the song when Billy plays the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on August 9.