Elton John

I used to have a dislike for Elton John when I was younger but nowadays I find the Bernie + Elton compositional combo fascinating and very unique. I love how insular, yet extremely familiar their sound feels. At their peak they had the ability to craft songs that your grandmother would love, but had both lyrical and musical moments brimming with creative, slightly psychedelic touches that gave them an edge. Add Elton's penchant for being an extravagant, charismatic showman and it's not hard to see why he sold the insane amount of albums he did.

I think he has aged with a certain dignity too. Not trying to relive them good old days, just having fun with being a living legend.

What do people think about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCbUhgJojs0

Instrumental demo cut in 1967? It's all right - not great, but not bad. It's more interesting as a snapshot of what he was like before he developed his fully-formed musical personality. Did he generally forgo lyrics before Taupin came along?

I believe he cut a single he wrote before meeting Taupin, I haven't heard it.

A song (or two) with lyrics, that is.

I'm surprised no discussion about "Cold Heart" on the board, especially now that it's taken off in America, where I hear it in the wild quite a bit. One of the women at my hair salon yesterday gushed in Spanish, "Ooh, I love this song!" as it started up.

It's not a particularly shrewd mashup: "Sacrifice" and "Kiss the Bride" (!) and the Dua Lipa-sung "Rocket Man" set to a clippity-cloppety beat.

I read some kind of stat a while ago that he accounts for THREE PERCENT of all global recorded music sales

I think I heard this in an Elton documentary. It was 3% of worldwide LP sales in 1975 (I think).

cold heart is ridiculously catchy despite not working on paper at all, i like it

the lyrics make literally no sense lol but when has that stopped elton

a bit "Jive Bunny does Elton!"

I'll admit it gains from public exposure and I'll tolerate it like I didn't when I reviewed it last fall.

it's pure musical xanax i hope it hits number 1.

here's the ugly as shit completely amazing animated furry video for reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qod03PVTLqk

the pnau remix is the charting one, slightly souped up version of the original.

my first encounter with it is this claptone remix which i really like, it's pretty deep and elegant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vsYCY6Vn4

On Saturday I was at a function where the DJ played amapiano and Afrobeats all day long. This was the only song that got played more than once, and both times everyone was going wild for it.

I've never been to an Elton John concert, but I just got a ticket to his Barclays Center show next week. It got me curious, so I went looking for live material on YouTube. No one who is 76 performs like they're still in their 20's, but it's really something to see him so energetically flamboyant and sounding so young - until now, I had only seen him on talk shows when he was already in his 50's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-rrfP4W2QA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly07GWoK9aY

Ok, the Barclays show wound up being a ton of fun. The best parts were the extended workouts on "Levon" (after which Elton pretends to collapse on his piano from exhaustion) and "Rocket Man" with some gorgeous interplay between Elton on piano and Johnstone on guitar...also the coolest effect of the night (and this was a great eye-popping show in terms of visuals) was during "Rocket Man." The set piece opens with a view of Earth as we gradually pull away, but it's also when everyone in the arena opens their phones to take a picture, so the background visual miraculously expands into a simulation of the Milky Way that covers the entire arena. Awesome.

And Elvis Costello & Diana Krall brought their kids! I forgot Elton John hosted their wedding - crazy.

On Saturday I was at a function where the DJ played amapiano and Afrobeats all day long. This was the only song that got played more than once, and both times everyone was going wild for it.

― boxedjoy, Tuesday, February 22, 2022 7:09 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

can confirm that this was the big hit at a gay ski party i did on 2/26.

the "Kiss the Bride" interpolation is clever-ironic if you're hip to the Elton catalog, a cool excuse for a falsetto for everyone else.

I'm a fan of the Elton John/Dua Lipa mashup. I like the song "Sacrifice" but I like it better in this context, weirdly.

I was a bit miffed that my mother had no idea the "cold cold heart" part was from "Sacrifice", which confirms as I suspected that her brain forgot everything he did post-1977 other than "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues".

"Sacrifice" (his first UK #1!) got airplay down here incommensurate with its Billboard ranking; it's the biggest Elton hit in South Florida I heard between "Nikita" and "The One."

well, I guess the George Michael duet counts too.

Didn't realize he was one Emmy away from an "EGOT" which he just attained via an Emmy award for Best Variety Special (Live) for Farewell From Dodger Stadium. (FWIW, in addition to several Grammy Awards, he got an Oscar for a song for The Lion King and a Tony for Aida.)

Ego is the great lost Elton Song - got to somewhere in the mid 30s in the UK and wasn't on any albums so nobody heard it. Elton goes Sparks, almost. There's a story in his book of how he spent a load of money making the video, and then even more money hiring out a cinema to show the thing for its premiere, and then nobody had any real reaction to it and he realised he'd spent a few hundred thousand pounds on four minutes of video and everyone went to the cinema for that so he just got them to play it again while he snuck out the back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt7xtcD40Dg