Billy Joel has been de-aged by AI in the new music video for his first single in 17 years, Turn The Lights Back On, which was released on Friday.
In the clip, the 74-year-old balladeer, who teased the song’s release earlier this year, cycled through several stages of his life and career while performing the track in an ornate concert hall.
The Piano Man singer began the video by flipping over a page containing lyrics for his track Famous Last Words, which was originally released in 1993 and served as a marker of his longtime departure from his recording career.
Joel then plays the song’s opening chords on a Steinway & Sons piano before the camera pans upward, and when it reaches the singer again, he is seen at a much younger age during the early stage of his career.
The performer is then digitally aged by a few more years before he belts out the song’s first chorus, after which he was aged further to resemble his image from the 1980s for the track’s second verse.
The Grammy Award-winning songwriter was aged further while performing the track’s piano solo, and the singer progressed forward to his current age as he crooned the song’s final chorus.
Footage and home moves taken over the length of Joel’s career and lifetime was then shown as the track’s outro was played.
The video ended with a shot of the handwritten lyrics for Turn The Lights Back On resting on top of the musician’s piano.
Turn The Lights Back On, which was produced by Freddy Wexler and co-written by Joel, Wexler, Arthur Bacon and Wayne Hector, was originally released to the hitmaker’s fans on February 1.
The singer’s most recently-released single as a solo artist prior to the debut of Turn The Lights Back On was All My Life, which debuted in 2007.
The hitmaker also wrote a track entitled Christmas In Fallujah, which was performed by Cass Dillon and released that year.
The performer announced that he would be returning to the recording industry this past January, and Turn The Lights Back On went on to debut at number 11 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
The song also peaked at number 62 on the US Billboard Hot 100 listing following its release.
Joel played the song during the 66th Grammy Awards ceremony, which was held earlier this month, and the performance marked the first time that he had sang at the awards show since 2002.
The singer opened up about the song’s writing process during an interview for the Grammy Live! From The Red Carpet show, where he recalled losing his interest in songwriting over the years.
He stated via People: ‘The whole point of doing what I do was because it was so much fun to do when I first started. I kind of lost that after a while.’
The performer then remarked that working on his new track with Wexler ‘got me to find the joy in it again.’
