With the flip of a digital change, Billy Joel followers have their first new monitor in 17 years, “Flip the Lights Once more On.”
It has all the markers of a conventional Joel ballad: the rhythm and rolling chords of “She’s On a regular basis a Girl,” the plea to easily settle for any individual “Merely the Means You Are,” the percussive bass and snare of “The Downeaster ‘Alexa.’” There’s even a lick throughout the piano solo some may recall from “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” – loads slower, positive, nevertheless we should at all times all be so lucky to be making new music into our 70s.
Nevertheless what does all of it add as a lot as? Does this indicate that Billy Joel is once more? Did he ever go away?
In my scholarship, I uncover the legacy of musicians – how their music reverberates and transforms over time, prolonged after the works themselves obtained right here into the world.
What makes Joel such an attention-grabbing case look at is his full of life place in shaping the lifetime of music that he composed method again.
Generally, the legacy of an artist of Joel’s stature comes into view after they go away. Nevertheless Joel has been throughout the “legacy making” part of his occupation longer than the whole lot of many various musician’s careers.
Inventive hibernation
Between 1970 and 1993, Joel launched a model new album every 12 to 16 months, composing higher than 120 songs.
Nevertheless he hasn’t launched a model new album of in model music since 1993’s “River of Wishes.” That album concluded with a monitor titled “Properly-known Closing Phrases,” a straightforward rock monitor with a chorus that repeatedly intones, “These are the ultimate phrases I’ve to say.”
From a distance, his followers obtained right here to know this as a retirement from churning out hit albums. Since then, Joel – as timeless as just a few of his songs could also be – has largely been an artist locked in time.
Though he method again cease recording new music, Joel has continued to fill stadiums. He toured “Face to Face” with Elton John for a lot of years, and in 2014 he began a month-to-month residency at Madison Sq. Yard. That run will conclude when he performs his 100 and fiftieth effectivity throughout the iconic venue in July 2024.
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These steady dwell performances have every extended the longevity of his songs and have allowed new generations to seek out and luxuriate in his once more catalog.
He’s provided higher than 150 million albums. Area items, anthologies and explicit collector’s editions have prolonged been an answer to maintain and capitalize on an artist’s legacy – look no further than the common line of fiftieth anniversary reissues launched by The Beatles. Inside the absence of current music, Columbia Data has labored to maintain up Joel’s presence by releasing Joel’s “Largest Hits: Amount III” (1997) and “My Lives” (2005).
A star’s ultimate hurrah?
Now it’s 2024, and Joel has been creatively dormant longer than he was full of life.
So what’s he doing with “Flip the Lights Once more On”? Could a model new compilation be throughout the works?
I’ve written elsewhere regarding the affiliation of Joel’s life and occupation by finest hits compilations.
To encourage the acquisition of these compilations, they’re usually accompanied by the discharge of current supplies, whether or not or not it’s one factor from the archives that certainly not made it onto one amongst his prior albums, or – on explicit occasions – a brand-new monitor.
Nevertheless in a streaming interval replete with accessible and customizable playlistspromoting a forthcoming album doesn’t seem like the motivation proper right here.
Fairly, Joel seems to be taking a cue from The Beatles.
Closing November, they launched “Now and Then,” which was marketed as “the ultimate Beatles monitor.” One month later, Joel wryly urged all through a Madison Sq. Yard residency stay efficiency that he may want one factor throughout the pipeline. The knowledge unfold by the use of his first-ever publish to TikTok.
In some strategies, like “Now and Then,” the discharge of “Flip the Lights Once more On” is a once-in-a-lifetime event – notably for his youthful followers.
Actually, for lots of of hundreds of people this could be the primary time many could have ever had the privilege of listening to a model new monitor by an artist they’ve prolonged admired.
Inside the teaser video saying this new monitor on Jan. 22, 2024, you truly see Joel flip the online web page for this subsequent chapter in his occupation. Within the occasion you pay shut consideration, the online web page he flips is a waterlogged set of lyrics for “Properly-known Closing Phrases.”
He’s making good on the promise of the lyrics from that monitor: “There’ll possible be totally different phrases one other day, Ain’t that the story of my life?”
Once more throughout the Nineties, he obtained out of the enterprise of setting up data because of he was in a rut. It’s attainable that the years due to this fact haven’t been as fulfilling as he’d hoped.
Does “Flip the Lights Once more On” hint at what comes subsequent? Is that this Joel in a position to share new music with the world as soon as extra? Or is it a wistful plea from a baby boomer artist to be remembered as his star dims?
Perhaps trying to derive which means is inappropriate. As he declares in the direction of the tip of the monitor, “I’m proper right here correct now.”
Presumably that’s all any of his followers can ask for.
This textual content has been updated to proper the years which have handed since Joel’s ultimate new monitor. It’s been 17 years, not 15 years.