100 Best Albums
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- OCT 5, 1973
- 17 Songs
- On the Rvn - EP · 2018
- Honky Château · 1972
- Cold Heart (PNAU Remix) - Single · 2021
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road · 1973
- Too Low For Zero (Bonus Track Version) · 1983
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road · 1973
- Madman Across the Water · 1971
- Elton John · 1970
- Too Low For Zero (Bonus Track Version) · 1983
- Hold Me Closer - Single · 2022
Essential Albums
- Disney’s feline fantasy was also the first collaboration between Tim Rice and Elton John. Combining African influences with Rice’s plainspoken yet poetic lyrics, the pair’s songs work just as well without visuals, whether sung by the cast—including an amazing Nathan Lane, who takes lead on “Hakuna Matata”—or John himself. (The cast recording of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" is a particularly buoyant take on the Oscar-winning hit.) Portions of Hans Zimmer’s sweeping score round out the album with appropriately cinematic flair.
- This sharply honed and impeccably catchy concept album casts Elton John as Captain Fantastic and lyricist Bernie Taupin as the Brown Dirt Cowboy in a semi-autobiographical version of the pair’s struggling early days. The 1975 LP shows off Elton’s stylistic leaps too—beautiful, languid ballads like “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” and “Curtains” mix with baroque, ivory-tickled poppers “Bitter Fingers” and “Better Off Dead.” Then Elton and the band rock hard on “(Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket,” and offer up a randy slice of Philly-styled soul on “Tell Me When the Whistle Blows.”
- Led by the glam-slam party starter “The Bitch Is Back,” this underrated 1974 release takes comforting sonic turns. There’s an acoustic guitar and piano love ballad (“Pinky”), a guitar-driven pop-rock gem (“Grimsby”), a country music spin (“Dixie Lily”), and a cinematic sojourn (“I’ve Seen the Saucers”). “Ticking” is a sobering vocal-piano song about violence, and the album’s centerpiece, “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” (which features two Beach Boys on backing vocals), is a betrayed lover’s plea that rises on a bed of exquisite harmonies. Here, Elton tests the era’s rock ’n’ roll boundaries, expertly mixing breakup balladry with mood-setting grandeur and fist-pumping rock.
- 100 Best Albums Having rocketed from the lavish orchestrations of “Your Song” and “Levon” to “Crocodile Rock” in less than three years, Elton John saw fit to make a Big Statement tying together all his musical impulses. The 1973 double LP Goodbye Yellow Brick Road cemented not only his nearly wayward eclecticism, but also his audience’s willingness to follow any path he trod. The result was his critical and commercial peak—an album whose tracklist looks, at first blush, like a greatest-hits anthology and a defining snapshot of an artist at the height of his powers. The album’s opening sequence is more or less a sketch of Elton John’s early career and imperial phase, blending these far-reaching musical swings with Bernie Taupin’s increasingly cinematic and high-concept lyrics. The quintessential FM-rock-era sprawl of “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” segues into the sentimental and ubiquitous Marilyn Monroe tribute “Candle in the Wind” and bursts into full-on Eltonic lunacy with “Bennie and the Jets.” Many cuts (the elegiac title song, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” “Grey Seal”) became airplay staples, while others (the manic “Your Sister Can’t Twist [But She Can Rock ’N Roll]”) deserve more notice than they got—likely because of Road’s sheer bulk of worthy material.
- This 1973 release was a turning point in Elton John’s career. It found him and lyricist Bernie Taupin becoming purposely concise in their songwriting—even radio-friendly, which wasn’t a bad thing. Besides the hits, like the tensely foreboding “Daniel” and rock ’n’ roll uplifter “Crocodile Rock,” many of the album cuts suckerpunch with equally killer pop hooks and lyrical smarts—from the schoolyard yarn in the lively, mellotron-enhanced “Teacher I Need You” to the empathetic piano-and-string ballad “Have Mercy on the Criminal” to the punchy horns in sing-along rocker “Elderberry Wine.”
- Honky Chateau is the pinnacle of Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin’s obsession with all things American, not least because its themes are funny (“I Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself”) and personalized (“Amy,” a sly paean to young lust). Elton’s small group, augmented with some daredevil electric violin by Jean-Luc Ponty, adapts to everything from the New Orleans carousel music of “Honky Cat” to the Ray Charles-ready “Mellow.” Similarly riding varied currents, the man does some of his best singing here; he’s positively funky on the Band-informed “Susie (Dramas).”
- The Rocket Man's hits are as stylistically ambitious as his fashion sense.
- The Rocket Man's visuals have dazzled for decades.
- Even in his glittery days, Sir Elton was an unmatchable balladeer.
- The musical companion to Elton’s first autobiography.
- “At this time music is so important to people.”
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
Live Albums
Compilations
- 1992
- Taron Egerton & Elton John
- Bright Light Bright Light
Radio Shows
- The icon (and music obsessive) shares his favourite songs.
- The artist joins Elton John on the Rocket Hour.
- The Australian duo join Elton John on the Rocket Hour.
- Elton John plays his favorite releases.
- Greg joins Elton John to talk about their album X’s.
- Elton John plays his favorite female soul vocalists.
- Elton John plays his favorite new releases.
- Elton John celebrates episode 400 with guests.
More To See
About Elton John
At the height of the fever dream that was Elton John’s life in the ’70s, the singer-songwriter had the optician Dennis Roberts design a pair of giant, sculptural glasses studded with 57 battery-powered lights in the shape of the name Elton—to the tune of about $5,000. Adjusted for inflation, you’re talking about something more like $25,000. But John had a show to put on, and wouldn’t that be something to talk about? The excess was always apparent: the rhinestones, the costumery, the old Hollywood glamour retrofitted for a new, gender-bending world. But beneath the feathers, John’s music—written with the lyricist Bernie Taupin—was direct and unpretentious, the kind of rock ’n’ roll storytelling that met you where you were. Even if you didn’t know exactly what it meant—who is the dancer, and why are they so tiny?—the feeling was immediate, universal. By 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John said they were writing a couple of songs at breakfast and recording them before lunch. This was pop music, John argued: You weren’t supposed to think about it too much, and god help you if you did. And yet here we are, singing the songs five decades later. Born Reginald Dwight in Pinner, England, in 1947, John took to the piano young, studying on a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music while obsessively listening to Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. They were so physical, John marveled—they didn’t just play the piano, they beat it. He started playing in pubs at 15 and, around 20, met Taupin through a want ad in a music magazine. There were good years and bad ones, highs and lows—that handful of Valium before jumping into the swimming pool in 1975, for example, or the disco album, which John himself described as jumping on a dying bandwagon—but he has always endured, emerging from the debauchery of the ’70s and redefinitions of the ’80s bruised but never beaten, a gay icon, AIDS activist, philanthropist, Knight Bachelor, and father of two. In 2018, nearly 50 years after his debut album, he embarked on a three-year farewell tour, and published his first autobiography, Me, in 2019. The host of Apple Music 1’s Rocket Hour, Elton has been the recipient of countless awards (Grammys, Oscars, BRITs, Tonys, Ivors), has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and, in 2020, was awarded the Companion of Honour.
- HOMETOWN
- Pinner, Middlesex, England
- BORN
- March 25, 1947
- GENRE
- Pop