Billy Joel debuts unheard song ‘Every Time’

Posted On November 30, 2024November 30, 2024

At 75 years old, Billy Joel’s creativity isn’t slowing as she debuts a new, unheard song this week on John Mayer’s radio show. Titled ‘Every Time’, the track was played as an insight into his ongoing creative process.

With 13 studio albums under his belt, Billy Joel has a lengthy discography. It’s not just quantity but quality too, as the Piano Man has achieved 13 top 10 singles in the US, having penned some truly timeless hits that are broadly beloved, like ‘Piano Man’ and ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’.

But still today, it’s clear that Joel’s musicality and creative mind are still whirring away. On November 28th, 2024, the musician appeared on How’s Life, John Mayer’s new radio show for SiriusXM. During their interview, while discussing his process, Mayer asked if his guest had any snippets of an unfinished song he would be comfortable playing for the listeners.

He unveiled ‘Every Time’, explaining that this song is an idea that he’s been working on for a long time. He called the track a “spare part” that he’s been trying to figure out for “years and years and years and years”. However, in discussing it, he displayed the endurance that has likely powered his career as he is still determined to make something of this glimmer of a song. He said he “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.”

After hitting play, listeners were treated to Joel’s signature piano styling but with a distinctly moody tone to it. There are no lyrics to the song yet as it exists solely as a piano solo, but Joel explained that he sees the track as being about the inevitably of something going wrong, stating, “The thought behind that was, ‘I’ll screw it up every time’”.

This interview between Billy Joel and John Mayer comes a month after the two performed live together. At the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on October 12th, Mayer joined the musician on stage at his show to play ‘This Is The Time’. That was the second time the duo had played the song together, with the first being back in 2008 when Mayer was an up-and-coming act.

In February 2024, Joel released his first new music since 2007 when he shared ‘Turn The Lights Back On’. So with this new music and the glimmer into his ongoing creativity with ‘Every Time’, it’s clearly that Joel has never stopped making music, even if the public wasn’t being let into that side of his process for a long time.

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