When I wrote my post about Billy Joel and Taylor Swift last week, I referred to Billy Joel’s song “Turn the Lights Back On” in passing. But it really deserves its own post. If you go watch the lyric video, which is excellently done, you can interpret it as a portrait of a romantic relationship, which is fine.
But if you watch this video below – where, with Billy’s permission, AI is used to create versions of him singing the song at different eras of his life even though he released it in 2024 – it is sheer genius. Joel is 22 years older than me, which means he’s closer in age to me than I am to my kids. By the time you get to my age, the more you do things on several age levels at once, especially if you’re doing them in the same spot where you did the same thing decades ago. This is a really great picture of how that feels.
What is a vocation? How does it endure through the years? Can it change? How does a vision persevere? Are we the same person now that we were fifty years ago?
Also, why do I cry every time I watch this video?
Image of the United Palace, where the video was filmed, by Professorcornbread – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link.
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