Billy Joel breaks down his high musical standards

Billy Joel spilled the beans on his 17-year-long break from the music industry.

As fans will know, on Thursday, the Honesty singer made his musical comeback with the release of Turn the Lights Back On.

Nonetheless, appearing on the Audacy Check-In podcast, the 74-year-old musician revealed the reason for his prolonged hiatus from creating music.

Billy stated in inception, “I have this high bar that I set for myself. If I don't reach that bar, I beat myself up and I punch myself and I hate myself.”

“So I stopped doing [music] because I got tired of feeling like that,” he confessed.

Further elaborating on how writing songs frequently made him feel, the singer admitted that when you "do it on your own" again and again, it makes you feel "lonely" and he wanted to feel otherwise.

The singer went on to explain, “The whole point of why I got into music in the first place — same reason [Wexler] did — it was fun,” before noting, “Music is fun. Rock N’ Roll was fun.”

“It was all about having fun — and I kind of lost that,” he maintained after which he concluded by saying, “And I turned the lights off because it wasn't fun anymore."