Billy Joel has explained why it has taken him almost 20 years to write new music.
The singer who recently released his first new single Turn The Lights Back On in 17 years, has admitted that he had fallen out of love with song-writing, claiming that he did not find it “fun” in the last two decades.
Billy Joel had previously hinted that new music was on the horizon, after launching his own TikTok account.
“I have good news, I have bad news, I’ll give you the bad news first. We don’t have anything new to play for you”, Joel can be heard saying on TikTok.
Joel’s new single was released yesterday (February 1) via Columbia, and is available across all streaming platforms.
“turned the lights off”
Speaking on the latest episode of Audacy Check yesterday alongside his co-writer Freddy Wexler, Billy Joel admitted to falling out of love with music in the last two decades.
“It was fun. Music is fun. Rock n’ roll was fun. It was all about having fun — and I kind of lost that and I turned the lights off because it wasn’t fun anymore”, he said.
Joel also revealed that many people had tried to implore him into returning to the studio to work on new music, however, he had “always resisted it”.
He said, “I studiously avoided it because songwriting had become painful. I have this high bar. I said to myself, ‘If I don’t reach that bar, I beat myself up and I punched myself and I hate myself.’ So, I stopped doing it because I got tired of feeling like that”.
“struck me immediately”
That all changed when the singer heard what Wexler was working on two years ago, and Joel began to rekindle his love affair with song writing.
“The melody, the chords, the chord progression, even the time signature was something that struck me immediately, and that’s how I relate to music”, Joel explained.
“This particular lyric in this song, I’ve had these thoughts, I could have written these lyrics verbatim. I’ve chewed on these words and I’ve thought of these words, and I’ve said these words before. It was all kind of falling into place — and who am I to fight that?”.
Turn The Lights Back On can also be purchased here.
Billy Joel also confirmed that he will perform at this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony for the first time in 22 years. More on that here.
