Don’t expect a new album after the surprise release of Billy Joel‘s first new song in nearly 20 years. “Nope!” he bluntly answered, when asked about a larger studio project by Variety.
“Who makes albums anymore anyway?” he added. “I think the only person making new albums these days is Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo. I don’t know other people who make albums. I don’t know what the marketing of that is like now.”
Part of that marketing effort might have been appearances at the Grammys and the national broadcast of a glitzy concert at Madison Square Garden. But then the New York show was controversially cut short. Worse, the snafu happened while Joel was performing his signature song, “Piano Man.”
READ MORE: Ranking Every Billy Joel Album
“I wasn’t surprised,” Joel admitted. “I’ve never been really happy with the way music is presented on television. I think for TV people, it’s really all about the visual. If you’re looking at a television set, you’ll see a big screen and a little tiny speaker and that should tell you enough about where their priorities are.”
Why Billy Joel Says Songwriting Is ‘Torture’
CBS quickly announced a re-airing of the concert in full, but the damage was already done. Joel busied himself with a co-headlining tour alongside Sting after his lengthy residency at the Garden came to a close.
His setlists included “Turn the Lights Back On,” Joel’s long-awaited new song. But despite its warm welcome, Joel still describes songwriting as a “form of torture.”
Referring to his piano, Joel told Variety: “There’s this big black beast with 88 teeth that wants to bite my fingers off while I’m writing. I drive myself nuts. It’s just not as good as I want it to be. It’s a great deal of torment, and I decided I don’t want to put myself through that anymore.”
The pressure led to “drinking problems and all kinds of self-hate when I was writing, because I set the bar so high,” Joel added. “It’s not something I miss.”
Final Albums: 41 of Rock’s Most Memorable Farewells
From ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘Icky Thump’ to ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Everything Must Go.’
Gallery Credit: Ryan Reed
They Hated Their Own Albums