After waiting for the longest time....Oh, ohhh, oh. For the longest time... Billy Joel has finally released new music.
"Did I wait too long?" the 74-year-old asks in his new single, "Turn the Lights Back On," which was released Thursday.
It marked Joel's first single in 17 years. His last proper pop album was 1993's "River Of Dreams," nearly 31 years ago.
The new song is a “classic Billy Joel-style tune, embodying the hallmarks of his signature sound and ushering in the next chapter of his story," according a January press release from Columbia Records.
Joel, the fourth best-selling solo artist of all time in the United States, first hinted at the possibility of new material during a concert at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 19.
“I have good news and bad news,” Joel told the crowd during the show. “I’ll give you the bad news first. We don’t have anything new to play for you. The good news is you don’t have to sit through something you have no idea what it is. Although, we got a little something we’re working on you might hear sometime.”
The song — which Joel wrote with Freddy Wexler, Arthur Bacon and Wayne Hector — is available on all streaming platforms and on a limited-edition vinyl. A lyric video was released on Joel's official YouTube channel. Joel has not yet announced if more material, or even a full pop album, are to follow.
YouTube and streaming did not exist when Joel's last studio album, the classical piano collection "Fantasies & Delusions," was released in 2001.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. >Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
The six-time Grammy winner did not release another single until the 2007 ballad "All My Life," which he wrote for his then-wife Katie Lee. Later that year, Joel's song "Christmas in Fallujah" was released with Cass Dillon on lead vocals.
Joel has toured extensively despite the lack of new material, selling out venues and filling set lists with his many crowd-pleasing hits like "Piano Man" and "We Didn't Start the Fire."
Joel announced last summer that he would end his historic monthly residency at Madison Square Garden, during which he has performed one show per month at the New York City venue since January 2014. Joel will play his final MSG residency show on July 25, which will be his 150th career show at the venue, the most of any musical artist.
