‘The 100th: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden – The Greatest Arena Run of All Time’ concert special was announced at the Super Bowl VIII on Sunday (11.02.24).
The ‘Piano Man’ will end his record-breaking stint at the iconic New York City venue, which first began back in January 2014, on July 25, 2024, with his 150th show.
And before the big game kicked-off at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, CBS announced the two-hour special, which will be filmed on March 28, and will mark Joel’s 100th consecutive performance at MSG.
The ‘Uptown Girl’ hitmaker said at a press conference last year: “I’m kind of flabbergasted that it lasted as long as it did.
“My team tells me that we could continue to sell tickets, but 10 years, 150 shows – all right already!”
The special will air on Sunday, April 14 at 9 pm ET/PT via CBS and Paramount+.
News of the programme comes after the 74-year-old singer released ‘Turn the Lights Back On’, his first single in 17 years, earlier this month.
Joel explained the huge gap was because he had lost the “fun” of writing songs.
Speaking with his co-writer Freddy Wexler on ‘Audacy Check In’, he said: “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.”
Joel explained how, over the last 17 years, other people encouraged him to get back into the studio but he “always resisted it”.
He added: “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.”
But when he heard what Freddy was working on two years ago, his love for creating new music began to return.
He said: “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.
“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?”