2000 Years: The Millenium Concert (2000)


 

Disc One
  1. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
  2. Big Shot   
  3. Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)
  4. Summer Highland Falls
  5. The Ballad of Billy the Kid
  6. Don't Ask Me Why
  7. New York State Mind
  8. I've Loved These Days
  9. My Life
  10.Allentown
  11.Prelude/The Angry Young Man
  12.Only the Good Die Young
  
  Disc Two
  1. I Go to Extremes
  2. Goodnight Saigon
  3. We Didn't Start the Fire
  4. Big Man on Mulberry Street
  5. 2000 Years
  6. Auld Lang Syne
  7. River of Dreams
  8. Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
  9. Dance to the Music
  10.Honky Tonk Women
  11.It's Still Rock and Roll to Me
  12.You May Be Right
  13.This Night

 

Billy Joel, one of the most consistently electric live performers of his generation, has always had a curious relationship with the live album. Songs in the Attic was a clever conceit—old deep cuts, newly reborn in a live setting—but lacked the popular hits that audiences might expect. Kohuept, his Cold War excursion behind the Iron Curtain, was more geopolitics than performance. And now, at the dawn of a new millennium, Joel finally offered what might have been the definitive concert document—if only it weren’t quite so in love with its own occasion.

The setting, of course, was irresistible: Madison Square Garden, New Year’s Eve 1999, the symbolic hinge between centuries. If you were there, the thrill must have been incandescent. The city, the man, the moment. It had all the ingredients for a transcendent live recording. What we received instead is a document that too often trades musical continuity for celebratory detour.

There’s plenty of music here—two full discs’ worth—but the musical flow is routinely interrupted by time-stamped stage banter, New Year’s reflections, and a version of Auld Lang Syne that seems better suited to a televised Times Square countdown. Listening years later, the energy of the room evaporates quickly. What was once exhilarating becomes awkward nostalgia. It’s the aural equivalent of watching old confetti fall in slow motion.

The frustration lies in the balance. Joel’s command of his catalog is, as ever, masterful. He delivers a solid swath of hits—Only the Good Die Young, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, Movin’ Out—alongside rarities that haven’t graced his setlists since vinyl was king. There’s genuine excitement when a long-forgotten track surfaces. But too often, the performances are derailed by party antics. River of Dreams is all but sabotaged by a jarring, mid-song detour into Land of 1000 Dances, a moment which likely delighted the in-house crowd but lands with a dull thud on record. The impromptu cover of Sly Stone’s Dance to the Music similarly feels like an inside joke without a punchline.

Joel has always been an affable, engaging frontman. His stage banter is warm and funny, and he’s never shied from conversing with the crowd. But here, the commentary veers too often into time-locked triviality. Jokes about Y2K and passing references to the night’s logistics aren’t timeless—they’re timestamped. One wishes for a sharper edit, one that kept the atmosphere but trimmed the excess. Ironically, Joel himself provided the model nearly two decades earlier: a 1982 New Year’s Eve show from Long Island, released on HBO and later VHS, in which the concert took precedence over the countdown.

There are fine moments to be found. Joel stretches his set with care, including seldom-heard tracks that feel more like gifts than obligations. And of course, the core band—especially Liberty DeVitto on drums—remains a well-oiled machine. But the problem is expectation: this was supposed to be the live album. Instead, it’s a party souvenir.

In the end, 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert is not a failure, just a missed opportunity. A better album lies somewhere in the master tapes, obscured by noisemakers and midnight cheer. For those who were there, it may always hold magic. For the rest of us, it’s a reminder that not every moment of celebration needs to be immortalized in stereo.

Back To Main Page
Go To Next Review