“Did I wait too long to turn the lights back on?”
So wonders Billy Joel — a legend for all lifetimes — on “Turn the Lights Back On,” his return from his self-imposed songwriting retirement that arrived Thursday morning, 50 years after his “Piano Man” breakthrough in November 1973.
And man, he can still sing us a song.
It’s his first new single — his first new music period — since the ever-romantic crooner dropped “All My Life” on Feb.14, 2007 as a Valentine’s Day present for his then wife, Food Network host Katie Lee (although the two would divorce two years later in 2009).
But despite the fact that, at 74, the New York native hasn’t lost much of his skills either behind the mic or on the keys, he pretty much gave up trying to write another “Just the Way You Are,” “My Life” or “You May Be Right” last millennium.
Before “All My Life” in 2007, Joel hadn’t released any original pop songs since his 1993 “Rivers of Dreams” album. After that, he went classical on 2001’s “Fantasies & Delusions” before beginning his long-running residency as Madison Square Garden’s house Piano Man 10 years ago in January 2014.
And just as Joel’s historic run playing the hits that everybody wants to hear heads into its final string of shows at the Garden — he’s there on Feb. 9 before wrapping up his steady gig with his 150th show at MSG on July 25 — a long-dormant creativity has been ignited anew in Long Island’s resident Rock & Roll Hall of Famer.
“I’m late, but I’m here right now/Though I used to be romantic/I forgot somehow/Time can make you blind,” Joel sings in the chorus over classical-tinged keys.
But while he’s ostensibly serenading a forsaken lover who he’s finally seeing again “as we’re laying in the darkness,” he might as well be finding his way back to his greatest passion: music.
You see, Joel —like many aging artists whose classic catalogs will never be beaten — basically decided, “Why bother?”
Why put out new songs, new albums in a marketplace where you don’t make any money from record sales or streams — unless you’re Taylor Swift — when all people want to hear is “New York State of Mind” every single time?
And like many of us who might not be able to recapture our glory days — Father Time has a way of being cruel like that — Joel, perhaps, turned the lights off a little too soon.
“Turn the Lights Back On” — which, after Joel performs it live on the Grammys Sunday, will hopefully be followed by a full-fledged album — won’t make you “Say Goodbye to Hollywood.” But it’s a welcome return from a man, who, now a senior entertainer, seems to have a new appreciation for the gifts that he still possesses.
“I’m trying to find the magic that we lost somehow,” Joel sings like a man searching for his long-ago mojo.
But while it may never again be what it once was, it’s still there.