Billy Joel has shared a teaser of a previously-unheard song.
The ‘Piano Man’ hitmaker offered up a “spare part” that he’d been working with for “years and years and years and years” but has yet to finish titled ‘Every Time’, though he is pleased with the dramatic piano break he has composed for the track.
Appearing on the first episode of John Mayer’s new SiriusXM show ‘How’s Life’, the host asked Billy if he had any parts of an unfinished song he would be happy to share with listeners.
Billy said: “I had always told myself I was going to do something with this, something’s going to happen with this. It’s a really nice piece of music.”
The 75-year-old musician admitted he didn’t think anyone had heard him play it before as he began to play ‘Every Time’.
He then quipped: “The thought behind that was, ‘I’ll screw it up every time’.”
The ‘Uptown Girl’ hitmaker released his first single in 17 years, ‘Turn the Lights Back On’, in February, and 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 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.”
In July, Billy played his 150th and last show of his residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden. For his final night at the venue – where he has performed every month since January 2014 – he brought out Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose for a number of songs.
He later confirmed details of a 2025 North American tour and also announced he will play his only European concerts next year in Edinburgh and Liverpool in June.