Elton John

Plus 'Benny and The Jets' is fucking great.

or maybe it wz someone else, about someone difft

An important cultural figure, even if you can't stand him. Greater talents have failed to capture the elation of the final flourish to "Philadelphia Freedom". His dress sense in the "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" promo is very evocative even if you think it's shit. That's just about all, really.

'Nuff said

how much do the Beatles account for?

"All the Girls Love Alice" roxx though.

Things go off the rails pretty quickly on CD2 however. Too much stuff from "Songs From The West Coast" (as someone already said, his voice is totally fucked on that record), altho' thankfully "Candle In The Wind 97" is not on there.

Can't stand his music myself, but he's a damn sight less objectionable than, say, Phil Collins.

The tracklisting on the first disc of that new greatest hits does indeed look great but the second one is mostly a dud.

and i'm always amused by the "if i were a pianter...but then again; no" bit from that song (song for daniel).

what's quite wierd is that if you see a photo of him and bernie taupin from the seventies you'd never really pick which one was the international superstar and which was the unheralded backroom boy.

(trans. bernie tupin was quite presentable looking, elton john looked like elton john)

and i'm always amused by the "if i were a pianter...but then again; no" bit from that song (song for daniel).

what's quite wierd is that if you see a photo of him and bernie taupin from the seventies you'd never really pick which one was the international superstar and which was the unheralded backroom boy.

(trans. bernie tupin was quite presentable looking, elton john looked like elton john)

would love to get my hands on a copy of that.

anyway i heard he's getting rid of his glasses and getting corrective surgery. this could be the beginning of the end.

"I love listening to a Falco CD or maybe even Elton John - to be honest everybody slags Elton but you get cunts like Merzbow and Autechre hiding behind bullshit and pretence, with Elton what you see is what you get, a fat twat with a wig making shit pop with no pretence or apology for his output. I get less annoyed listening to one of his greatest hits CD's than I do listening to someone trying to be "experimental" for the fucking sake of it."

hahahaahah

"Kaboom! Guess who stepped in the room? The mother fuckin' Eighties!"

Now I wanna download Bowie's Lets Dance.

Except that Bernie was/is straight -- so like Bobby said, ain't no humpin' around.

It came out today. I'm not holding my breath, but it would be nice if he had one more good album in him...

The record's been getting good reviews here too - although I'm a bit suspicious since a lot of the praise has been focussed on the concept rather than the music.

Although some people have a hard time realising, "old farts" sometimes make great music. I am not claiming this is necessarily the case for Elton John tho (being kind of sceptical as he hasn't made a great album since "Captain Fantastic")

You can't fuck with that.

and i'm always amused by the "if i were a pianter...but then again; no" bit ...

yeh sure, amusing lyrics. and it's a very beautiful song overall.
but then again -

...from that song (song for daniel).
- no, it's actually from "your song". and, ahem, then again & again, that line actually runs as "if i was a sculptor..." ;)

I honestly have a hard time imagining that Elton ever had "redneck ways".

checked online and apparently he's never been to space either???

ya dont say so, yo!

But someone did save his life that night! :)

Also sprach Geir, ever the optimist.

He's a congenital liar 'baby's got blue eyes', I've checked he doesn't have any childeren.

the song "madman across the water" is so epic

dude...the version on the rerelease of Tumbleweed Connection, with Mick Ronson on guitar, is doubly epic

Some thoughts on an Elton record which hardly ever gets talked about (and not without reason).

gybr is astounding, fuck the //haters upthread

Recently bought vinyl copies of Don't Shoot Me and Captain Fantastic. The song I've really taken to is "High Flying Bird." "Daniel"'s as bland as ever, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" still great.

elton john is great. i think his music is closer to musical theater than any other major pop songwriter, because there is a really pronounced narrative element to his best songs. also his voice is great, and his songs have such straightforward arrangements, they're never weighed down by anything... idk, it's shallow, melodramatic music, but it is all really well done.

https://youtu.be/qv5-SCDL5A4

Music theory examination of Benny

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