I'm here for this, right now.

A nice video too, sort of like as if "Take On Me" grew up and got old.
posted by chavenet at 1:20 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

This is great! His voice still sounds so good.

I've always had a Billy Joel : USA :: Elton John : England analogy in my head, like they're both brash and seasoned from the very start. They share the same arena at least in my headcanon, and this song really seals it. Thanks for posting!
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 4:15 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

Rumor has it this is leading to a full new album. I would love for that to be true. Aside from the listening pleasure, I want new Billy Joel songs to play on the piano. After 30 years I'm familiar with his catalog and yearn for something new from him.
posted by Servo5678 at 5:08 AM on February 2 [7 favorites]

Oh thank you so much for telling us about this. I have enjoyed Billy Joel's work so much for so much of my life, and it's such a pleasure to get more of his work, oh and there's a signature intricate piano bit at 2:30. And the melancholy and hope and voice and his musical style....

Oh and the top YouTube comments are super sweet too, people reminiscing about how long they've loved his work, about sharing it with family, someone saying Joel's music is the reason they learned how to play piano....
posted by brainwane at 5:13 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]

I’m very glad that the commenters above are happy about this.

I urge all readers to watch this video.

OMMFG.

It’s like the whole song is: “I now understand that everyone hated We Didn’t Start The Fire, may I come back now? Where’s my fanbase?”
posted by pompomtom at 5:27 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

ummm:

NOT BILLY-JOELIST.

honest, but just listen.
posted by pompomtom at 5:28 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

GDI, I am not laying in the darkness with you, Billy, god DAMN it, Billy! I spent twenty years trying to get kids to quit laying when they should be lying and here you are nailing the coffin shut on poor old lie. Besides! I'm not lying in the darkness with you, either! "Please explain, I can't read your mind, I'm just asking for forgiveness yadda yadda sealion yadda, you gotta love me, I'm my generation's Johann Sebastian Bach." Christ almighty god, the hubris.

But he does sound fantastic and the animation with the piano keys forming his life's path is just lovely.
posted by Don Pepino at 6:08 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

I found it interesting how Billy Joel deliberately stopped writing songs because he recognized the limitations of his talent. From this 2018 Vulture interview:

Those other guys still write songs. You don’t. What does that say about your relationship to making music compared to theirs?

Like I said, I 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.

I wonder what changed his mind.
posted by swift at 6:46 AM on February 2 [6 favorites]

I am here for the Billy Joel Renaissance, after years of being ridiculed by the cool kids for being a fan.

I can certainly understand the demons he described in that 2018 interview. I'm nearing 50 and haven't written a song (well, haven't completed a song) in nearly 15 years. Anytime I try, there's a voice that says, "who wants to hear what you have to say?" Despite all of Billy Joel's success, it doesn't surprise me that he has those voices too.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:56 AM on February 2 [13 favorites]

These must be the “there will be other words some other day” he sung about on Famous Last Words.
posted by dr_dank at 7:09 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

This has a lot of surprised-by-divorce-announcement vibes.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:14 AM on February 2 [9 favorites]

Anytime I try, there's a voice that says, "who wants to hear what you have to say?"

Really the only person who is actually forced to is you, and what with there being over eight billion people on the planet right now it would be pretty astonishing if nobody actually wanted to.
posted by flabdablet at 7:17 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

"It’s like the whole song is: “I now understand that everyone hated We Didn’t Start The Fire, may I come back now? "

I've never understood the whining about Didn't Start the Fire. I don't think it's a great song, but it's a fun one, and sometimes that's all a song has to be.
posted by tavella at 7:31 AM on February 2 [15 favorites]

HA I saw something about this on The Best Show with Tom Scharpling and legit thought the whole thing was something Tom made up as part of his long-time Billy Joel feud.

(I have no particular beef with Billy Joel, Glass Houses in particular is dope. But I have been enjoying the one-sided Scharpling feud for like 20 years now lol.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:01 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]

I was born in New York City, grew up for a bit near Oyster Bay, and I've been playing the piano for about 44 years, since age 6, so I've always felt a connection to Billy Joel's music, even if I haven't always loved every song. If this is all there is, i.e. no new album, it's a nice bookend to the career because of its rhyming with Piano Man — key of C, 3/4 time.
posted by emelenjr at 8:02 AM on February 2 [6 favorites]

it might be disco and it might be the blues / or maybe even something like the b-52s
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:05 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

This has a lot of surprised-by-divorce-announcement vibes.

It totally does.
posted by Quasirandom at 8:21 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

It's a pretty good song. And I'm another lifelong fan (turning 50 very soon), and it's nice to see people saying good things about Billy Joel. The ire for him is off the mark, silly, and tiresome. Great job, Billy!
posted by grubi at 8:26 AM on February 2 [5 favorites]

If you didn't like We Didn't Start the Fire, you can just not listen to it. It's not like it's My Humps or something.
posted by Naberius at 8:42 AM on February 2 [7 favorites]

My only complaint is that I don't like the drum sound, and would have loved to hear what Liberty DeVitto would do with it. I would feel a whole lot better if those two guys would sit down, apologize to one another (Billy more than Liberty), and hug it out. Life's too short.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 9:13 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

When I read about this a few days ago, the article incorrectly mentioned that Joel's last album, River of Dreams, came out 30 years ago; laughably wrong because I bought it on cassette soon after release during my university days which were only...

Looks like that fire is still burning.

Anyway, this is a fine song and his voice sounds great. I always liked Billy Joel - in the 80s he got labeled as Adult Contemporary which is normally an insult but in his case his songs really did seem "grown up" in a thoughtful way that appealed to me.
posted by AndrewStephens at 9:56 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

When I read about this a few days ago, the article incorrectly mentioned that Joel's last album, River of Dreams, came out 30 years ago; laughably wrong because I bought it on cassette soon after release during my university days which were only...

If you want to make it worse, We Didn't Start the Fire catalogs events that occurred between 1949 and 1989, or a period of forty years.

It has now been 35 years since the song was released. Almost as much time as the difference between "Harry Truman, Doris Day" and "China's under martial law" (i.e. Tiananmen Square).
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:23 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]

Whatever Joel is doing to preserve his voice, I want to apply to my entire body.
posted by KHAAAN! at 10:33 AM on February 2 [6 favorites]

The laying/lying jarred me at first, but then considered there might be a reason: Cuz you know sometimes words have two meanings and maybe everybody in this song is truthful even in the darkness
posted by sageleaf at 10:49 AM on February 2

Not vintage Billy Joel, but happy to have it, good enough, and especially the piano solo/bridge was lovely.

Mrs Bookbook kindly got me tickets to his gig at Hammersmith Apollo a few years ago, which was totally fantastic, because I detest massive arena and stadium concerts, so that was a real gem. Assuming that he planned a DVD or live album from that, but ended up not liking the performance so it was quietly dropped. Can't think why else he would have done such a random tiny gig.

ANYWAY - I hope he's happy enough to have a new album in the works. As to the commenter above, I believe that Billy and Liberty DeVito are on good terms now.

Sauce: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/liberty-devitto-interview-billy-joel-memoir-1026564/
posted by bookbook at 10:50 AM on February 2 [3 favorites]

His voice still sounds so good.

How can you hear it through the tuning? Christ almighty, what a mess.

I love Billy Joel, I really do. But for me? This song stinks, is unnecessary, badly-produced (there is no attack on the piano! lighten up on the compressor, fellas), and the more-or-less quote of Scenes from an Italian Restaurant during the musical break at 2:28 is eye-rolling.

Billy Joel is among the greatest living songwriters (I will brook no argument to the contrary! none! no brooking!) and it took two co-writers to put this together? Maybe he was right to quit releasing new music 30 years ago when he was still in the game.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:58 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

North shore of LI boy here. Seen Billy in the 80s many a time. Really enjoy his catalogue including Fire. This song? Hmm. I like the poetry. The music not so much. First, what's with the southern twang of his voice trying to rhyme? Is that autotune gone wrong? Not sure. I get that it is not a pop song, but there is no hook or no sung line that I would want to sing along with. I am not a musician or have any musical talent so I can only judge a song by the vague, "Do I like it?" metric. I would not buy this song. But, having seen one of his recent residency shows at the Garden, I would see him again. He still puts on a great show.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:29 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

This has a lot of surprised-by-divorce-announcement vibes.

I’ve been hearing “Tell Her About It” over my work’s music subscription service a lot lately. It has struck me that that song is not only very sweet but packs a lot of good advice on communicating with your partner that Billy Joel should have taken to heart himself.
posted by Eikonaut at 12:02 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]

Billy Joel is among the greatest living songwriters (I will brook no argument to the contrary! none! no brooking!)

Not even a little brooking?
posted by grubi at 12:10 PM on February 2 [3 favorites]

Don't make me tap the sign.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:27 PM on February 2 [4 favorites]

Awww.
posted by grubi at 1:01 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]

I've always liked Billy Joel's songs, but this one didn't do anything for me. I hope he's got a few more up his sleeve, because I would be sad if this was the last thing he wrote.
posted by briank at 1:04 PM on February 2

My spouse and I the other day discussed the fact that "Tell Her About It" and "How Will I Know?" are about the same problem.
posted by brainwane at 1:12 PM on February 2 [1 favorite]

I'm a fan, but this song didn't work for me. It's like someone trained an AI on Billy Joel's discography, then gave it the prompt "...but make it sound more like Meat Loaf".
posted by Daily Alice at 1:28 PM on February 2 [3 favorites]

Billy Joel has never really been my thing, but I've always really admired his craft, so I'm glad that the reaction here has been really positive. That said, I think he can write a lot better than this song, which sounds pretty generic to me. The chorus is basically the same as that of Chicago's "Hard To Say I'm Sorry" but in a waltz rhythm (and the verses use the same chords too, which doesn't help). I'm hoping there's more coming that's more interesting!
posted by dfan at 1:42 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]

As a piano playing singer songwriter who grew up on Long Island during his heyday, for whom being able to play every one of the songs from his (1980s) Greatest Hits album by heart was virtually a requirement, who was also in multiple a capella groups that performed The Longest Time with alarming regularity, and who is absolutely over getting asked to play Piano Man "for shits and giggles" like some sort of @#%& trained monkey, I have Very Complicated Feelings about Billy Joel. I've never seen him live, but I did sit in one of his vintage Cadillacs when my stepfather, who owned a car repair shop that was working on the car, brought it home to sit in our driveway. I may have also filched a doo-wop tape from said car.

Very recently I was out on LI visiting my parents and stopped by the local seafood place to pick up dinner. I noticed they had striped bass. "Wow," I said, "I guess you can sell striper after all!"
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:55 PM on February 2 [5 favorites]

elemenjr: "it's a nice bookend to the career because of its rhyming with Piano Man — key of C, 3/4 time."

True, this, although my mind went immediately to Summer, Highland Falls and She's Always a Woman.

There are a couple of points where the 3/4 doesn't seem to work well. A measure of 4/4 might have helped, or maybe not rushing into the next part. I'll get used to it. Anyway, the new song will be stuck in my head for a few hours. I'm good with that.
posted by bryon at 3:40 PM on February 2

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, wait up. You... stole? A doo-wop tape? From Billy Joel?!?
posted by Don Pepino at 4:48 PM on February 2 [8 favorites]

I enjoyed some Joel back in the day, mostly fun pop stuff but aside from Miami 2017 and Scenes from an Italian Restaurant never saw greatness from him. Almost Piano Man but not quite. This just feels too derivative of his own oeuvre with fairly cliche lyrics. Sorry.
posted by billsaysthis at 8:46 PM on February 2

This has a lot of surprised-by-divorce-announcement vibes.
MonkeyToes, I'm also getting a sort of entreaty-to-the-audience vibe? In interviews, Joel spoke of his songs as being a conversation with his fans. When he stopped writing new material he maintained connection through concert performance, with a considerable repertoire. (And he does put on a terrific show). His creative fire went dark, and he'd thought it was permanent; I'm so, so glad he's doing this now.

Turn the Lights Back On

Please open the door
Nothing is different
We’ve been here before
Pacing these halls
Trying to talk
Over the silence
And pride sticks out its tongue
Laughs at the portrait that we’ve become
Stuck in a frame
Unable to change
I was wrong

I’m late
But I’m here right now
Though I used to be romantic
I forgot somehow
Time can make you blind
But I see you now
As we’re laying in the darkness
Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on

Here
Stuck on a hill
Outsiders inside the home that we built
The cold settles in
It’s been a long winter of indifference
Maybe you love me
Maybe you don’t
Maybe you’ll learn to
And maybe you won’t
You’ve had enough
But I won’t give up on you

I’m late
But I’m here right now
And I’m tryin’ to find the magic
That we lost somehow
Maybe I was blind
But I see you now
As we’re laying in the darkness
Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on

I’m late but I’m here right now
Is there still time for forgiveness
Won’t you tell me how
I can’t read your mind
But I see you now
As we’re laying in the darkness
Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on

[That "Did I wait too long/To turn the lights back on" (to make songs, to continue our conversation? But I won't give up on you), weirdly brought to mind Joel in Moscow in 1987 (...when am I gonna take control/get a hold of my emotions -- STOP LIGHTING the AUDIENCE).]

Anyway, I'm also from NY, grew up with Billy Joel's voice in my ear, and have no hope of impartiality. Joel's like a favorite uncle who keeps missing Sunday dinners because he's working or in the pen. (And I think he'd like the stolen-tape story? At least that kid had good taste in music.) At this point, his diction (crisp "romantic" / hick-from-Hicksville "win-TUH") is an auditory Old Spice, and he sounds wonderful.

Thanks for posting this sailor's valentine, one for the books.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:06 PM on February 2 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I think this song is pretty mid, but it is SO ENTIRELY WHY I LOVE BILLY JOEL SONGS that I can forgive him for that.

I do hope the new album, if it emerges, contains some amount of raging rockers and some retro nods. Mostly, I'd like it to be an ALBUM. I would like to to contain something more than the sum of its individual parts, something that if I sit down and listen to I feel like I've come out the other end having experienced something more than just a collection of songs.

Mostly, I'm happy that he feels confident enough to create new songs again. He tried a bit of classical and I guess when that didn't pan out he decided he couldn't actually write music? Which I guess is crazy, because I haven't seen any stories published about how he went off and studied classical music composition and learned about its great history and complexity and then strove to create something within that milieu that was in his voice... What I saw was that he went from writing rock and pop songs to trying to write classical music like those are somehow related skills. And then he failed and so he just did MSG concerts once a month instead.

Please let this new album be great! This is a good song, but not a great song. Let the album be great.
posted by hippybear at 3:00 PM on February 3

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, wait up. You... stole? A doo-wop tape? From Billy Joel?!?

I did! I wasn't trying to be a thief, exactly, but I brought it inside to listen to it and forgot about it and then the car was returned to the auto shop and picked up and, well, too late.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:02 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]

In case you missed it, Billy Joel performed the new song (and You May Be Right!) at the Grammys last night. I actually liked the song better live than I did in the recording. The recording is a little antiseptic, while the live performance was more raw and suited to his strengths as a performer.

Also, his writing partner/producer is milking his 15 minutes for everything he can get.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:04 AM on February 5 [1 favorite]

About a month ago, I was staying at my father's house to take care of him in the final weeks of his life before ALS took him from us. His hospital bed was in the rec room and I slept on the couch at the foot of his bed. Just a few days before he passed, as he was flipping through the endless cat videos he used as his primary source of entertainment toward the end, and I was phone scrolling on the couch, just keeping him company. The family was baffled as to why this guy who loved music and movies had abandoned all of that in favor of some of the worst content on YT, but that was what he chose as his comfort zone. That afternoon, he suddenly stopped on Billy Joel's song "The Stranger". It was one of those albums we listened to whenever we went camping when I was a kid, our family's road trip soundtrack for years. We listened to that one song in in a weird, almost sacred shared silence... then he went back to the AI generated cat video farms. That was the last song he ever listened to. I tried to get through this song, but the feels were intense. Maybe later. Thank you for posting this.
posted by evilcupcakes at 11:25 AM on February 5 [10 favorites]

Billy Joel "Turn The Lights Back On" If It were produced by Phil Ramone and as interpreted by Fernando Perdomo

The world is a better place with Billy Joel releasing beautiful new pop music in 2024. "Turn The Lights Back On" is classic Billy albeit with modern production. I decided to make a companion version with me cutting real drums in the style of Liberty Devitto and Rhys Clark , Real Bass in the style of Doug Stegmeyer and Larry Russell and Mandolins ala "Piano Man"

pompomtom: re: "where's my fanbase?" Nah, he doesn't need to ask that as he knows they never left: they've been going to the concerts at MSG/other locales and wishing on various online forums that he'd play the deeper cuts from his catalog.
posted by apartment dweller at 6:12 PM on February 7 [1 favorite]

The official video just dropped. I'm not sure how they accomplished the younger versions of Billy, whether they got him in James-Cameron-Avatar-style headgear and composited his younger self onto his current self, or just straight-up got AI to do it based on existing images.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:15 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]

The younger version of Billy Joel: Attila.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:45 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]

I feel like the song is great, but the production is mid.

Joel's best songs are about him and his feelings, and this one lands squarely in his wheelhouse. "Did I wait too long?" he asks. I think the answer is no, because you can feel the person who wrote “Summer, Highland Falls” and “I‘ve Loved These Days” in the music and lyrics of “Turn the Lights Back On.”

On the other hand, I want to give the producer a noogie. Those drums and strings? C'mon man. Maybe — Maybe! — it can be semi-understood as a call-back to “Say Goodbye To Hollywood,” but without the rhythm it's just bombastic drum hits ruining the chorus and strings that curdle rather than sweeten.

Ben Trismegistus: “I actually liked the song better live than I did in the recording. ”

I saw just a snippet of this and immediate had the same impression. But I always liked the live records better.

The Pluto Gangsta: “The official video just dropped.”

I love the video, although I feel like the mix is even worse than the initial lyric video.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:01 AM on February 16

Interview with Howard Stern, a couple of days ago: Though Joel wouldn’t say specifically whom he was writing about, he did offer some insight. “There’s a double meaning. Part of it is about a relationship and part of it is about my own life,” he explained. “I’m putting out a new record … do I get a second chance here?”

Also, this anecdote:

Billy has long idolized Jimi Hendrix, so it’s no surprise he wanted to see him in concert when the guitar virtuoso passed through Flushing Meadows back in the late ‘60s, but it turned out to be no easy task. “We didn’t have money to buy tickets,” Joel told Howard, explaining he was just 18 or 19 at the time.

So, he tried a different approach.

“I bullshitted my way in — I got some cables, I put on an outfit that looked like a roadie, and I had, like, equipment with me,” he said, explaining he even donned a fake British accent to convince security he was part of the crew. “I’m dragging stuff in [like], ‘This has got to get to the stage … Get the fuck out of the way, Jimi’s gotta have this.’”

The ruse worked, but it wasn’t long before he was noticed by Jimi’s real-life head roadie, Keith Robertson. “‘Hey you, you’re pretty good. You’re gonna help us load the amps,’” Billy recalled the legendary roadie saying before putting him to work dragging gigantic Marshall amps onto the stage. “The thrill! I got to set up his stuff,” Joel continued, adding, “I actually got to sit on stage while Jimi Hendrix was playing his concert.”
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:17 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]

“Billy Joel's New Song Is Deeper Than You Think” [28:01]—Aimee Nolte Music, 01 March 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 12:52 PM on March 1