Billy Joel and Sting Win Big in San Antonio: Review and Photos

It's not often you see a stadium headliner walk onstage in casual attire to introduce their opening act at the start of the show. But when you're Billy Joel — and you're welcoming your longtime friend Sting to the stage — you're allowed to flaunt the rules.

Both rock legends maintained an air of nonchalance during their Friday performance at San Antonio's Alamodome, belying the top-tier musicianship and treasure trove of hits they brought to the table. (You can see UCR's exclusive photos from the show below.) "I spent a lot of money on special effects," Joel deadpanned. "The piano goes that way. The piano goes this way."

Perhaps Joel was reveling in his newfound freedom after wrapping his historic, 100-plus-show residency at Madison Square Garden in July. Maybe he felt enlivened by the change of scenery, as he's got more than a dozen shows booked across North America and the United Kingdom through mid-2025. Either way, he sounded light at heart on Friday as he updated the audience periodically on the Yankees-Dodgers game ("The Dodgers won with a grand slam? Shit!" he exclaimed right before "Piano Man") and busted their chops with tried-and-true stage patter.

"Yeah, yeah, sure. You don't have that album," he said as he introduced "The Entertainer" off 1974's Streetlife Serenade to applause. "Nobody has that album."

Joel was also light on his feet as he abandoned his piano and gave his best Mick Jagger impression during a snippet of the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up," earning one of the biggest crowd reactions of the night. They spurred him further onward as he nailed the soaring falsetto notes of "An Innocent Man," which had a lot riding on it. "If I don't hit them, you're gonna know," he warned the crowd. "And you're gonna make that real nasty noise: 'Ewww, he can't sing anymore!' And you'd probably be right."

That classic New Yorker self-deprecation has been Joel's signature for more than half a century, but it proved unnecessary on Friday. The 75-year-old singer was in fine voice throughout his two-and-a-half-hour performance, embodying the downtrodden lounge lizard on "New York State of Mind" and the earnest loverboy on "Uptown Girl," once again hitting some remarkable high notes. His newest single "Turn the Lights Back On," his first in 17 years, was notably absent, but it's difficult to gripe about that when Joel instead played relative rarities like "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" and "Big Man on Mulberry Street," the latter featuring lead vocals from Sting.

The ex-Police frontman also impressed with his 70-minute opening set, split almost equally between originals and songs from his former band. The 73-year-old rocker looked and sounded robust as he prowled the stage and delivered powerful renditions of "Message in a Bottle" and "Roxanne," still hitting many of those pixie-range notes with ease. The singer and bassist is backed on this tour by guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas, and the new trio gave the songs a muscular, stadium-filling edge, often stretching into long-form territory while preserving the nuances of their recorded counterparts. Joel's vocal assistance during "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" reinforced the show's tagline: "Two Icons, One Night."

You can add to that: "50,000 happy fans."