“Did I wait too long to turn the lights back on?” – Billy Joel, “Turn The Lights Back On”

“No, you didn’t.” – BourbonAndVinyl.net

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be writing about a new Billy Joel song in 2024. I’ve been doing this blog for a while now and I’ve never posted about Billy Joel. Of course Joel has been relatively silent since 1993. I’m a big fan of Billy Joel’s and have been since college. I was actually kind of into Joel when I was in junior high/high school – it was hard not to be into Joel in the late 70s/early 80s. But it wasn’t until I was in college and I met future roommate and life long friend Drew that I jumped in on Billy in earnest. When we met, Drew was a Who/Billy Joel guy and I was a Stones/Springsteen guy. Naturally, as happens in college, we cross pollinated musical interests. I’ve been a fan ever since. I never thought we’d hear anything new from Joel again, as he’d retired from songwriting and recording, but on February 1st he dropped “Turn The Lights Back On,” billed as his first song in 17 years.

The headlines all say it’s been 17 years but for me at least, it’s been longer. In 2007 he released a song “All Of My Life,” which I never heard until this week. In fact, I’d never even heard of the song until this week. It was a string drenched, Sinatra-torch style song. It’s nice, but it’s no “Big Shot.” The only place you can find “All Of My Life” is on YouTube on a grainy video. He did sort of release another song in 2007, “Christmas In Fallujah,” a song he wrote but he let some kid, Cass Dillon (who was dating his daughter), sing the song. Does that really count? You can also find a live version of Joel singing the song and it’s worth hunting down. Billy wrote the song after getting countless letters from the troops, which is kind of awesome when you think about it.

So like most of you, Billy Joel’s last batch of original songs was on his 1993 album River Of Dreams. The last song on that album was “Lost For Words.” In light of his walking away from writing/recording, some folks saw that as symbolic… perhaps Billy had run out of things to say. In the 30 years that he’s been away from doing original music he’s of course toured incessantly and has even done a continuous “residency” of playing venerable Madison Square Garden every month. Billy has claimed in the intervening years that he’s continued to compose songs but he just “didn’t write them down.”

I’m not sure why Billy dropped out of the game. He had a string of great albums from 1973’s Piano Man through 1989’s Storm Front. I don’t think any of us were terribly thrilled with River Of Dreams in 1993 but by that point he was allowed to have an off album. I was dating a woman who owned that disc and I tried listening to it… I did like “All About Soul.” And for the record I hated all that Innocent Man stuff. Let’s leave the “Uptown Girl” uptown if you will… Apparently disappointed with River Of Dreams Joel just decided to take his considerably large song book on the road for the rest of his career. I’ve always wondered if Joel’s issues with booze (and car crashes) stemmed from the fact that he’d gone idle in terms of songwriting and recording. Idle hands… as they say.

I don’t know what inspired him to sit down and write/record again but goddamm I’m glad he did. He co wrote “Turn The Lights Back On,” which surprised me… most of his songs read, “Written by Billy Joel.” But after 30 years maybe he needed some gutter guards to keep the ball moving down the lane. I’ve been pulling up the video for the “teaser” for the song for a while now and “Turn Up The Lights,” in the teaser at least, reminded me of “And So It Goes” a beautiful piano ballad from Storm Front. Now that I’ve heard the whole thing it gives me more of a Nylon Curtain vibe. In the video for the teaser, Joel turns the page on a note book from “Lost For Words,” to a new page with “Turn The Lights Back On” which really brings it all home for me.

The track is a piano ballad with some big drums – one can only hope that is Joel’s longtime drummer Liberty DeVitto banging away. There are strings and crescendos. It’s told from the viewpoint of a lover who’s been away a while. He’s asking if it’s too late to turn the lights back on and start again. Obviously it’s a metaphor for his songwriting career. I love the way Billy plays piano but can we just pause for a second and comment on how superb his voice sounds. Perhaps the constant touring has made his voice stronger as opposed to say… Elton who sounds… well, bad. Anyway, “Turn The Lights Back On” may be criticized for sounding like a tentative return from Joel, but after 30 years he’s allowed to sound tenative… I mean, that’s kind of the vibe of the whole thing. It’s a, “Hey, I haven’t done anything in 3 decades, do you guys dig this?” And for the record, I don’t think it does sound tentative. I really like the song. Here’s a lyric video:

I hope this means Joel has an album’s worth of material on the way for us. Or it could be another 17 years before we hear anything… although that might be a miracle of modern science at his age. Billy has always been a great songwriter, performer, piano player and the dude can rock. He can go from the sensitive ballad to the ballsy rocker all on one side of an album. The Stones waited 18 years, Peter Gabriel waited 21 years… why can’t Joel wait 31 years between albums? It’s never too late Billy, turn those lights back on, fire up the piano and let’s rock n roll… And let’s remember when an artist breaks his silence after 31 years, it’s a big deal.

To quote Billy… “Don’t take any shit from anybody.” I really like this song and I’ve certainly got my fingers crossed on a new album!

Cheers.