Billy Joel hits Hot 100 for first time since 1997 with new single 'Turn the Lights Back On'

Billy Joel's “Turn the Lights Back On” returns the legendary singer-songwriter to the Billboard Hot 100 as it debuts on the Feb. 17-dated chart at No. 62. The song — Joel's first release in 17 years — marks his first entry on the chart since the survey took place on October 11, 1997, when he topped the chart with his version of Bob Dylan's “To Make You Feel My Love”.

Joel returns to the Hot 100 just a week shy of the 50th anniversary of his chart debut: on the chart dated February 23, 1974, he debuted at No. 94 with his breakthrough hit “Piano Man,” which continued. to reach No. 25. Among his 43 career Hot 100 entries, including “Turn the Lights Back On,” he has amassed 13 top 10s, including three No. 1s: “It's Still Rock and Roll to Me ” (for two weeks in 1980), “Tell Her About It” (one week, 1983) and “We Didn't Start the Fire” (two weeks, 1989).

“Turn the Lights Back On” enters the Hot 100 after its first full week of tracking (Feb. 2-8) after debuting at 7 a.m. ET Thursday, February 1, from Columbia Records. Further boosted by Joel's performance of the piano ballad at the Grammy Awards on February 4, it debuts with 5.1 million radio audiences, 4.5 million official streams and 22,000 combined physical (via 7” vinyl) and digital singles sold in the US, according to Luminate. At the same time, it jumps 11-5 on the Digital Song Sales chart.

It's worth noting that Joel, who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, appeared as a writer on the Hot 100 in the midst of his quarter-century-plus chart-topping recording artist streak: Joy Cast's covers of classics “Only the Good Die Young” and “Uptown Girl” reached Nos. 50 and 68 in 2010 and 2011, respectively, while Fall Out Boy's update of “We Didn't Start the Fire ” peaked at No. 94 last time. July. (Additionally, Olivia Rodrigo's “Deja Vu” sings “Uptown Girl” and Joel himself, and the original “Uptown Girl,” 1983, and “Deja Vu,” the 2021 No. 3 hit. The pair performed both songs together at Madison Square Garden in New York in August 2022.)

“Turn the Lights Back On” was written by Joel, Arthur Bacon, Wayne Hector and Freddy Wexler. (Hector has co-written five top five Hot 100 hits, starting with O-Town's “All or Nothing” in 2001, while Wexler co-wrote the 2020 No. 1 “Stuck With U” by Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber )

“The melody, the chords, the chord progression, even the time signature was something that immediately struck me, and that's how I relate to music,” Joel said of how he reacted to what Wexler was working on. “That particular verse in that song, I had those thoughts, I could have written those lyrics verbatim. I've chewed on these words and I've thought about these words, and I've said these words over and over again. It was all sort of in place – and who am I to fight that?”

Joel has solo-written 40 of his 43 Hot 100 hits as a recording artist, with “Turn the Lights Back On” being his first co-written chart hit. In addition to the Dylan-penned “To Make You Feel My Love,” Joel charted in 1992 with his cover of Elvis Presley's “All Shook Up,” which Presley wrote with Otis Blackwell.