A remarkable thing happened in American culture last week. Pop music legend Billy Joel released his first new song in 17 years. And unlike most other “comeback” songs written by aging stars — The Beatles’s syrupy “Now and Then” from late last year comes to mind — “Turn the Lights Back On” is a revelatory piece of songcraft and a masterfully executed record.
While “Lights” features a number of Joel’s signature elements, including plain-spoken lyrical poignancy and rhythmically complex piano playing reminiscent of past hits such as “She’s Always a Woman,” the song is nonetheless vibrant and new. “Lights” is not the pitiable attempt of an aging artist to ape his younger self. In fact, it is so convincingly authentic that, upon first listen, I wondered if artificial intelligence had a role in its creation.
Perhaps most remarkable is that “Lights” is conscious of its place within Joel’s larger body of work, and yet it refrains from cheesy self-reference (think Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song”). Doubtless, Joel intends for his audience to ponder the song’s central question in relation to his own extended sabbatical from the music business.
Despite his omnipresence on American radio over the last 50 years, Joel’s absence from the charts over the past two decades left a perceptible void. Whatever one thinks of his contributions to American music — he was always too accessible for the tastemakers, too polished for the purists — there is no one else like him. And with each passing year of silence, the less likely it became that we would ever again experience his singular style in the form of new material. But with the release of “Lights,” the seemingly miraculous happened: Joel’s fans were able to step into the past as if for the first time. It is an achievement for the ages.
But one need not know any of this for the song to resonate deeply. The chorus, sung in Joel’s characteristic vibrato, is gut-twisting for anyone who has lived a meaningful life and has daydreamed about starting over again from scratch:
“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 layin’ in the darkness
Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on?”
Upon first listen, these lyrics transported me to a conversation I once had with a former big league baseball player whose name I’ll withhold for the sake of privacy. He and I had thrown back a few drinks during which he’d told me stories about baseball in New York in the 1950s and ’60s that would have been impossible to believe if not for the photographic evidence hung along the walls of his basement bar: nights at the Copacabana with celebrities, fishing trips with fellow All-Stars, World Series victories that will echo for ages. And at one point he peered right at me through the wrinkly slits of his eyes and said, “Peter, you can’t imagine how bad I wish I could do it all over again.”
But one need not be a legendary musician or a famous ballplayer to be pricked in the heart by the message. It is accessible to anyone who, out of sheer love for the triumphs and challenges of a life well-lived, yearns to do it all over again.
The inexorable march of time is inescapably tragic — no matter how well one has come to terms with reality. To mourn for time lost is to be human. “Lights” makes one feel all of this.
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For America, too, the song could not be more relevant. At the outset of an election year in this age of acrimony and estrangement, one wonders: Is there still time for reconciliation? For forgiveness?
It isn’t likely. But “Lights” makes anything seem possible.
Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.
