Billy Joel Concerts Setlist

Billy Joel is an American singer and songwriter. He was born on May 9, 1949 in New York City, New York. However, he has not released a new song since 1993, but has been performing his old songs at Billy Joel concerts ever since. Joel was born to a Jewish family with a classical pianist as a father who fled from Germany from the Nazis. Thus, the young Billy was getting piano lessons as early as the age of 4. 

As a teenager, he was performing in bars as a singer-piano player to earn some money. However, this ended up having dire consequences for him. Because of a late night gig, he missed a crucial English exam, so he never graduated high school.

Thankfully, the music career worked out for him even without a high school diploma. He was part of a hard rock duo "Attila", then the band “The Echoes” (later renamed “The Emeralds”), specializing in covers of “British invasion” songs. In 1967, Joel left the group to join a professional band with United Artists Records, “The Hassels”. He played the keyboard and sang vocals for them.

Joel’s first solo album came out in 1971, produced by Family Productions, with the title “Cold Spring Harbor”. While it was never a hit upon release, some of the songs later became very popular after being re-released as singles, particularly the one titled “She's Got a Way”.

The first big commercial success came for Joel in November 1973, when Columbia Records released his second album “Piano Man”. It peaked at the #27 spot on the famous Billboard 200 list. The titular track remains to be one of Joel’s most popular songs. In fact, it still closes almost every Billy Joel concert, and “the Piano Man” is a common nickname for him.

Since then, Joel released 10 more studio albums, thus his discography has 12 in total. The most successful one among them was “The Stranger”, which came out in 1977 and ended up going 10X platinum. As we wrote earlier, no new Billy Joel album has come out since 1993. The title of his latest album is “River of Dreams”, released in August 1993. Billy Joel’s biggest hits to date are the aforementioned “Piano Man” (1973), “Uptown Girl” (1983), and “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (1989).