Elton John #32: The Lockdown Sessions (2021)

We’re going to be stepping out of the Beatles solo albums for a moment, because for the first time in this blog’s history, one of our previously covered artists has released new music. And I promise I’ll cover Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways at some point, but today I thought I’d take a look at the newest release from one of our other previously covered artists, Elton John, and his new album The Lockdown Sessions.

Credit where credit is due, Elton could have spent his pandemic time lounging in one of his fabulous mansions, binging TV shows while polishing his awards or whatever it is that incredibly successful and rich cultural icons do. But instead, he kept busy, collaborating with a wide range of artists, doing recording sessions mostly over Zoom (though as someone who has regularly used Zoom in the past year and a half, I have no idea how they pulled that off) for a brand-new duets album. If you recall, Elton put out a duets album back in the 90s, which pulled from some of the era’s top talent like PM Dawn, George Michael, and RuPaul, along with fellow Boomer icons like Don Henley, Gladys Knight, and Leonard Cohen. So it’s only fitting that Lockdown mostly follows suit, drawing from contemporary pop as well as some of Elton’s fellow elder statesmen.

The result is all over the place, swinging wildly from genre to genre, covering EDM, soul pop, Americana, and even a trap track. To be honest, I was hesitant to write about this one, given that much of its material comes from previously released sources, making it straddle the line between an album and a compilation. But there does seem to be some new material on here, which made it worth checking out. While the stylistic variation leads to a lack of cohesiveness, the nice thing is that if you don’t like one song, odds are the next one will be something completely different. Not a fan of EDM? You don’t have to wait long for some trap. Not into covers of heavy metal classics? Some Americana-pop is just around the corner.

Inevitably, some of this material will work for you and some won’t. For me personally, I enjoyed Australian EDM trio PNAU’s “Cold Heart Remix,” which samples Elton’s earlier “Sacrifice” and “Where’s the Shoorah?” and features Dua Lipa singing the chorus to “Rocket Man,” swirling them all together into a genuine bop of a dance track. “Chosen Family,” Elton’s duet with rising alt-pop star Rina Sawayama from her Sawayama album features plenty of the pop bombast that Elton is known for. Other previously released material like Gorillaz’s “The Pink Phantom” (featuring 6lack) and his cover of the Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin” with British electropop artist Years & Years, also work pretty well, providing a handy showcase for Elton’s range and his willingness to fill whatever role is needed for the song.

That ends up working against the inclusion of some of these songs, at least on this particular album. Elton contributes to Miley Cyrus’ cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” from the recent mammoth collection of Black Album covers, playing piano alongside Metallica’s Robert Trujillo, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, producer/artist Watt, and even Yo Yo freakin’ Ma on cello. It’s a cool take on the song, but Elton is essentially reduced to sideman, his voice and personality largely fading into the background. The same goes for “One of Me,” his collab with Lil Nas X from his recent debut album MONTERO. It’s a great track, but Elton’s mostly just there to tickle the ivories a little bit. I appreciate that an artist of Elton’s stature is willing to serve as accompaniment, but it makes this, nominally an Elton John album, feel a little bit padded out, especially since it’s already over an hour long.

As fun as it is to hear Elton drop into a wide range of styles, it’s also a pleasure to hear him doing what he does best, and there’s a few good examples towards the end of the album. “Simple Things,” with Brandi Carlile, is a sweet Americana-tinged pop track, and “E-Ticket” with Eddie Vedder is a classic “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” style rock n’ roll track. One of my favorites has to be “Finish Line,” a stirring gospel-tinged duet with none other than fellow Discographication alum Stevie Wonder. It might not rank among the best of either man’s career, but it’s a gorgeous track, with Elton and Stevie backed by a gospel choir. Honestly, my heart can’t help but melt a bit whenever Stevie’s signature chromatic harmonica kicks in, and his singing voice still sounds remarkable at 71. I wish I could say the same for Stevie Nicks, who sounds a little worse for wear on “Stolen Car,” but she’s still Stevie Goddamn Nicks, so I’ll allow it (as if it’s up to me to allow or not allow anything).

The album ends with the heartbreaking “I’m Not Gonna Miss You,” a duet with the late great Glen Campbell shortly before he lost his battle with Alzheimers. The Oscar nominated track is an absolute tearjerker, as Campbell confronts the end of his life and all the things he’ll be leaving behind, capped off with the devastating kicker: “And best of all / I’m not gonna miss you.” You gotta be made of stone for that not to hit you right where you live.

Ultimately, there’s a few tracks that don’t work so well, but it could just be personal preference. I’m personally not a fan of the softboi soul/electro/pop/stuff of Surfaces or Charlie Puth, so their tracks were skippable for me. And while it’s not bad per se, hearing Elton sing the hook on a trap song alongside Young Thug and Nicki Minaj is…odd, to say the least. But even these misses (subjective though they may be) point to a more important quality: Elton’s palpable joy at collaborating with the newest and the brightest stars, lending some of his gravitas to these young artists. It’s a very appealing quality, that an artist of Elton’s stature (and let’s be honest, age) still wants to work with the pop stars of today, expanding his horizons well beyond his typical wheelhouse. It’s a quality he’s shown for a long time, guesting with everyone from Kate Bush to Queens of the Stone Age to A Tribe Called Quest. There are far worse ways to spend your quaran-time, that’s for sure.

Elton John: Some Closing Thoughts

One of the most interesting things for me about Elton John’s music is the way that it challenges conventional ideas of authorship and authenticity in pop music.  While composer/lyricist partnerships were common in pop’s early years, and are still common in the musical theatre world, they’re comparatively rare in pop music in the latter half of the 20th century, particularly in the late 60s and 70s when Elton and Bernie Taupin were making their best albums.

Earlier in the 20th century, in the first few decades of the recorded music era, singers who wrote their own songs were pretty rare.  Typically, the singer would act as an interpreter of the words and melodies that another artist, or artists, put to paper.  If Elton and Bernie had been around in the 30s and 40s, they likely would’ve remained the composers for hire that they were when they started out.  But by the time their music started to take off, the idea of singers writing their own songs had become more of the norm in popular genres.  The concept of the singer/songwriter exploded in the 60s and 70s, with artists conveying a newfound sense of authenticity by writing their own material.  In this era, the musical interpreters of old were falling out of favor.

So in that sense, Elton John represents an interesting duality; both a writer of melodies and an interpreter of other people’s words.  But does that make him less authentic than if the words were his?

We tend to assume that if an artist is singing words that they wrote, particularly if those words are in the first person, that they must be representative of their own thoughts and experiences.  But ask pretty much any songwriter from the era, and this may not always be the case.  Bob Dylan maintains that the songs on Blood on the Tracks aren’t based on his messy divorce, even though that seems like quite a coincidence.  Songwriting at its core is a form of storytelling, whether that story comes from the writer’s own life or the lives of others, and Elton knows how to use this better than most.

Because he’s not beholden to his own voice or the voice of his collaborator, Bernie Taupin is free to write in any guise he chooses.  Some songs seem to reflect Elton’s experiences, some Bernie’s experiences, and some are purely character-based.  By having the extra layer of distance that an outside lyricist provides, Elton is able to inhabit any number of guises throughout his music, from the personal to the gentle to the reprehensible.  This gives Elton a range as an artist that not everyone from his generation can pull off.  This distance must’ve been advantageous to Elton as a closeted gay man in his early years, allowing him to slip into the guise of a straight, woman-chasing rocker, wearing it like just another gaudy costume.

Some people have been critical of Bernie’s lyrics over the years, viewing them as overly obtuse or pretentious, but I would argue that their music together wouldn’t work nearly as well without them.  Bernie’s lyrics lend Elton’s appealing melodies an interesting dimension, and I think the songs would be a whole lot less memorable with other, more conventional lyrics (just look at his other lyrical collaborators for evidence of this).  Also, the duo’s lyrics-first approach leads to some interesting structural choices that may not have happened if Bernie were writing to Elton’s melodies and not the other way around.

All in all, the duo formed a rare synthesis that doesn’t have too many parallels in pop music history.  And their approach certainly paid off, helping Elton to become one of the biggest stars of his era, with a commercial hot streak that is still largely unparalleled.

It’s weirdly tricky to explain the cultural resonance of Elton John.  While he’s largely been viewed as an entertainer first and an artist second, I think his work holds up to pretty much anybody of his era.  We tend to think of things that are accessible as being less artistically valid, but Elton has made an art form out of pop stardom, from his songs to his stage presence.  The fact that he’s co-written some of the most memorable pop songs in music history–seriously, the list of hits this guy cranked out is still stunning–doesn’t detract from this fact.

Elton John is an easy person to take for granted; he’s been so famous for so long that he’s basically part of our cultural fabric at this point.  But it’s been fascinating to watch his career evolution; from his early massive success to his struggles to hold onto his place at the top of the pop pile to reinventing himself as an elder statesman, it’s been a lengthy reminder of why he got so damn popular in the first place.

Elton John #31: Wonderful Crazy Night (2016)

After the relatively somber proceedings of The Diving Board, Elton John wanted to make a party record.  Three years later, Wonderful Crazy Night fulfilled that desire, with an upbeat set of songs coated in a slick R&B finish.  Teaming up once again with producer T-Bone Burnett and his longtime bandmates, it’s similar in spirit to his retro-leaning 80s albums like Jump Up! or Sleeping With the Past, drawing from classic sounds while still sounding like a contemporary recording.

The downside of wanting to make a party record is that the music itself ends up feeling a bit samey.  This could be by design–party music generally isn’t meant to be listened to too closely, all the better to let its easy vibes soundtrack your merrymaking–but as a listening experience, it leaves a bit to be desired.

It’s still a fun album, though, with an energy Elton hasn’t really shown much in this century so far.  His post-millennium albums, while all solid, have been mostly in a reflective mode, even their upbeat numbers carrying the weight of time and all the miles driven over the years.  Wonderful Crazy Night feels like a deliberate rejoinder to that mode, focusing on the now rather than looking back.

Bernie’s lyrics are pretty standard for this kind of music, focusing mostly on love and relationships.  He does give us the second ode to a forgotten musician in a row with “I’ve Got 2 Wings,” a song about Utah Smith, an obscure preacher and guitar player who literally wore wings onstage, and fused music and sermonizing in a way that not many people had at that time.  This one’s a bit more triumphant than “Ballad of Blind Tom,” with a slight gospel bent fitting its subject.

I don’t really have much to say about this one, unfortunately.  It’s an enjoyable collection, and at 41 minutes, it’s his shortest album in a while, which I appreciate.  But it doesn’t have a ton of substance, especially after the last few albums had some of his more complex songs in decades.  But I think it sets out to do what it wanted to; it’s a lighthearted and fun album that doesn’t have to try too hard.  At this point in their career together, I think it’s understandable that Elton and Bernie would just want to have some fun.

Thus concludes our Elton John coverage!  It’s been fun to revisit some albums that I’ve known and loved for years, as well as discover some new ones I’d never heard before.  Even at their roughest, these albums have shown that Elton’s talent and consummate professionalism have never wavered.  While I have to admit I was ready for it to be over, I’ve still had a good time.

Elton John #30: The Diving Board (2013)

It was seven long years in between Elton John’s last solo album and The Diving Board.  In between he released a collaborative album with his old buddy Leon Russell called The Union, which I did not listen to for the purposes of this blog but plan to check out one of these days, and made a bunch of guest appearances on other artists’ work, from Kate Bush to Brandi Carlile to Queens of the Stone Age.  The release date for The Diving Board was pushed back a number of times from its original date of fall 2012, with Elton adding new compositions and tinkering with the track order.  Finally, about a year later, The Diving Board was released to strong sales and decent reviews.

The album reminds me a bit of Blue Moves, another album that found Elton and Bernie in a more somber, reflective mode.  Producer T-Bone Burnett, who had also produced The Union and has worked wonders with a number of veteran artists, wisely stays out of the way, foregrounding Elton’s voice and piano and giving the album a subtly warm feel.  They keep the arrangements simple and stripped down, all the better to foreground a lovely and complex set of lyrics from Bernie.

Bernie’s lyrics on The Diving Board are more concerned with the world around them rather than the more inward-looking lyrics of the past few albums.  Whether that’s trying to understand the sacrifice of previous generations on “Oceans Away,” detailing the exile of the titular man of letters on “Oscar Wilde Gets Out,” giving a voice to a blind, black piano player on “The Ballad of Blind Tom,” or being reminded of the violence outside their comfortable environs on “Mexican Vacation (Kids in the Candlelight),” there’s plenty to unpack across most of these songs.

There’s others, like “My Quicksand,” that I just plain don’t get.  Per the chorus: “I went to Paris once / I thought I had a plan / I woke up with an accent / I wound up in quicksand.”  Hmm.  It can’t help but stick out as another one of Bernie’s poetic obfuscations, especially against the relative clarity of some of the other songs.

Luckily, the good definitely outweighs the…not bad, but less good, I guess.  I’m a particular fan of “Ballad of Bind Tom,” which tells the story of Blind Tom Wiggins, a piano player who, in more recent years, has been categorized as an autistic savant, taken advantage of by the white powers-that-be in the slave era South.  While it’s a bit squirm-inducing to hear Elton sing lines like “may we present to you / all you Jim Crow monkeys / from Harlan County down to Tuscaloo,” the language feels purposeful to evoke the disconnect and the way that Black people were only viewed as human so much as they had moneymaking power.  Blind Tom’s is a story I wasn’t familiar with, and Bernie does an excellent job of granting him some agency that he didn’t have in life.

Another track that sticks out for me is “A Town Called Jubilee.”  Another song that could’ve fit nicely among the Southern narrators of Tumbleweed Connection, Elton provides it a cool, circular piano pattern, and the lyrics have a wonderful specificity that makes its characters’ striving, leaving their run-down Southern town to search for a better place, that much more effective.  The Diving Board is Elton at this most unhurried, taking his time to get it right, and I think the approach paid off.

We’ve got one more to go in our Elton journey!  Join me as we listen to Elton’s final album to date, though I’m sure the old pro has plenty more left in him.

Elton John #29: The Captain & the Kid (2006)

You may recall, back in 1975, Elton John released Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, an intensely autobiographical suite of songs detailing his early years collaborating with Bernie Taupin.  It was a massive hit, the first album ever to #1 on the charts in its first week, and more or less marked the end of Elton’s “classic period” (to borrow a phrase from Stevie Wonder) that started in 1970.

31 years later, Elton and Bernie would return to their comic book-esque alter egos to deliver The Captain & the Kid, a belated sequel to Captain Fantastic that purports to cover the intervening years since we last met our heroes.  The first album chronicled their rise from struggling songwriters-for-hire to having their first big hit, a period which only spanned a few years, whereas this one has three whole decades to catch us up on.

So yeah, there’s a lot of ground to cover.  And The Captain & the Kid lacks the clear narrative throughline of the earlier album, starting out as a detailed chronicle before realizing that, actually, that would take forever, opting instead for a more general look back at the years gone by.  This is probably out of necessity; if they took a granular look at the last thirty years in the same way they looked at their first few on Captain Fantastic, we’d probably be here for ten hours.

It starts pretty much where the last album left off, with our heroes, now full-fledged superstars, touching down in a turbulent America on “Postcards from Richard Nixon.”  From there, they take in the weirdos, and try not to be taken in by the hucksters, on “Just Like Noah’s Ark,” enjoy the splendor of New York City on “Wouldn’t Have it Any Other Way (NYC),” butt heads on “Tinderbox,” and struggle with addiction on “And the House Fell Down.”

The latter half of the album gets a bit more diffuse, with Elton more broadly looking back on the friends he’s lost (“Blues Never Fade Away”), reflecting on mortality  (“The Bridge”), and thinking about his past lovers (“I Must Have Lost It on the Wind”) before pivoting back to reminiscing about the early days on “Old ’67” and giving The Captain and The Kid one last ride on, um, “The Captain and the Kid.”

Pretty much all of Elton’s post-millennial albums have been in a reflective mode, remembering times gone by and the ways that a life can change with the years.  The Captain & the Kid takes that to its logical next step, an album that’s more about remembering than anything else.  It can’t help but feel a bit more diffuse than its predecessor, which again is probably due to the whole trying-to-fit-thirty-years-into-forty-minutes thing, where the duo just has to skip around a lot to catch us up.

It’s tempting to wish that we’d gotten more of a deep musical dive (maybe a whole album about what it was like recording Leather Jackets?), but luckily The Captain & the Kid is another strong batch of songs in Elton’s stripped-down mode.  The instrumentation is in line with the last couple albums, and the production is warm and unobtrusive.  There’s an extra kick of nostalgia to know that old bandmates Davy Johnstone and Nigel Olsson are backing him up here (and to be fair, they’ve been backing him up for a few albums now), minus bassist Dee Murray, who died in 1992.

As a 29 year-old, I don’t have much of a concept of death.  I’ve lost people close to me, as probably most of us have, but I can only imagine what it must feel like the older you get, as more of your peers begin to pass away while you stick around.  As Elton-via-Bernie asks on “Blues Never Fade Away,” “how did we get so lucky?” The Captain & the Kid manages to capture that feeling pretty well indeed.

Elton John #28: Peachtree Road (2004)

The American South has been a fascination for Elton John and Bernie Taupin dating all the way back to their third album.  So it’s only fitting that Elton, now a hugely famous recording artist, would keep one of his presumably several homes down there, specifically in the Atlanta area, on the street which gives Peachtree Road its title.  It’s also fitting for an album that’s generally reflective, warm, and content.

Peachtree Road continues Elton’s more stripped-back approach, with his core band of piano, bass, drums, and guitar, alongside the occasional strings or Hammond organ.  Evidently this is the first album Elton produced completely on his own, and its unfussy quality adds to its inviting feel.

The album mostly finds Elton and Bernie reflecting on the years gone by and all the things they’ve managed to achieve, sometimes with a touch of melancholy but mostly with a gentle, settled air.  “Fortune and fame is so fleeting / these days I’m happy to say / I’m amazed that I’m still around,” Elton sings on the opener “Weight of the World,” a song about looking back on life with a newfound air of freedom, about not feeling like you have to take on the burdens of the world.  It’s the sort of sentiment that age (and a whole lot of money) can bring, and Elton mostly stays in that mode throughout.  Even on “Turn the Lights Out When You Leave,” a honky tonk breakup anthem, he doesn’t seem too distraught by his lover’s leaving, assuring them (and us) that he’s gonna be just fine.

For an album named for a street in the South, it’s a less overtly Southern album than Tumbleweed Connection, at least in sound.  The aforementioned “Turn the Lights Out…” is pretty much the only straight-up country song, and “They Call Her the Cat” is a fun sort of Southern soul number with Swampers horns.  But imagery of the South in its beauty and tranquility pops up frequently; it’s like the sunnier songs on Tumbleweed like “Country Comfort” or “Amoreena” rather than the more somber story-songs.  “Porch Swing in Tupelo” finds Elton conferring with Elvis, or at least his memory as “that truck drivin’ boy / with the grease monkey look and the rock n’ roll voice.”  The titular porch swing was apparently one that the young Elvis himself used to swing on, and Elton sings about it with the kind of reverence reserved for hallowed ground, as if he can absorb a bit of that musical talent just by sitting there (not that he needs much more talent anyway).

Things only start to get a little unsettled towards the end.  “I’m scared of strangers / on the street / world’s so ugly / I can’t breathe,” Elton sings on “It’s Getting Dark in Here,” a song where the narrator’s clearly haunted, but it’s unclear whether it’s internal and external forces making him feel that way.  Luckily, he recovers on the final track “I Can’t Keep This From You,” which has the same kind of big, gauzy sound that characterized his 90s albums, and kind of feels like a holdover from that era that got tacked onto this record somehow.  It’s not a bad song, but it kind of breaks from the rest of the album’s feel in a way that’s a bit distracting.

Peachtree Road is another solid outing from this newly stripped down Elton and co., and while I didn’t find it quite as strong as Songs from the West Coast, it’s a mostly cozy, comfortable collection, and a nice reminder that sometimes we just need to slow down and enjoy what’s around us.

Elton John #27: Songs from the West Coast (2001)

As the new millennium dawned, Elton John’s output slowed considerably.  Where he’d averaged an album a year with the occasional gap in between, a full four years elapsed between The Big Picture and Songs from the West Coast, his first album of the new century.

So what does the 21st century have in store for our old pal Elton?  From the album’s first moments, where his piano enters your ears, shortly joined by simple drums and the oooh/aaaah backing vocals, it’s clear that Elton’s ushering in a new era by returning to the sounds that made him famous.  Stripped of the often-overbearing production of his 80s and 90s work, with only the occasional strings or keyboards to this is Elton fully embracing his position as a pop elder statesman, making music on his own terms.

It helps that Songs from the West Coast is a pretty stellar batch of songs, utilizing his old sonic playbook but with a mature, dignified air.  It doesn’t sound like Elton trying to recapture his old glory days, but rather stripping back to the things that matter most and delivering a satisfying album without a lot of fuss.

Songs from the West Coast finds Elton–through Bernie Taupin’s lyrics as usual–looking back to look forward, inhabiting characters that acknowledge the way life has made them bitter and closed off, but often trying to open their hearts again despite the pain.  On “Dark Diamond,” Elton sings about the way in which the walls he’s built have cost him the love that was able to cut through his defenses in the first place.  Later, on “I Want Love,” he sings about the ways life has hardened him, while admitting he still wants to be loved in an uncomplicated way.  It might not be the most romantic sentiment, but it feels like a hard-earned stance after a lifetime of heartbreak.

Side note: “I Want Love” was the album’s first single and has a pretty great music video featuring a pre-Iron Man-comeback Robert Downey Jr. lipsyncing the vocals while wandering around an empty house.  Definitely check it out if you haven’t seen it.

The heartbreak isn’t just internal, though.  “American Triangle” finds Elton singing about the brutal killing of Matthew Shepherd, a gay teenager in small-town Wyoming who was beaten and left to die, an incident which sparked national conversations about bigotry and violence.  Bernie’s lyrics juxtapose the beauty of the Wyoming landscape with the harsh reality of the violence Matthew suffered.  Assisted by Rufus Wainwright on backing vocals, Elton sings with a mix of anger and a sorrowful resignation; Matthew wasn’t the first, or the last.

When they’re not exploring love and loss, Elton and Bernie look back on their younger days with a new sense of perspective, examining the ways that their lives have changed over the years.  On the opening track “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Elton sings about the confident lie of youth, looking outwardly together but being just as messed up on the inside in the way that you can only do when you’re living fast and young.  Elsewhere, on “Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes,” Elton looks back on the wild kid he used to be while acknowledging that he’s not that guy anymore, even as the image of his younger self seems to linger like its own form of lost love.

Perhaps the best thesis for the album, and for Elton of the new millennium, comes at the very end.  On “This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore,” Elton sings “all the things I’ve said in songs / all the purple prose you bought from me / reality’s just black and white / the sentimental things I’d write / never meant that much to me.”  So is Bernie admitting through Elton that it was all a lie, that all the songs they’ve made together, have all been an act?

I don’t really think it’s that simple.  They’re acknowledging that they’re not as young as they once were, and the passions of youth that used to fuel them don’t do the same anymore.  When Elton sings “I’m dried up and sick to death of love / if you need to know it / I never really understood that stuff,” it doesn’t hit me as an admission of fraud, but more an admission that as we get older, we realize we know less and less than we thought we did.  The lie of youth, that we know everything there is to know about the world, that we have everything figured out, might be what we need to get by, but at a certain point we have to realize that we don’t have much of anything figured out, and that’s okay.  That even people as successful as Elton John and Bernie Taupin feel that way is both comforting and disturbing.

Ultimately, I think what Elton and Bernie are trying to say is that, yep, they’re older now, and the frantic pace of their career isn’t sustainable anymore.  From now on, they’ll be making the kind of music they want to make, when they want to make it.  And the fact that they’ve only released five albums in the last 20 years speaks to that shift in mindset.  If they’re all as good as Songs from the West Coast, then the wait seems worth it.

Elton John #26: The Big Picture (1997)

Now we come to The Big Picture, Bernie Taupin’s least favorite album he and Elton made together.  While Elton himself cites Leather Jackets as the worst, Bernie believed his lyrical inspiration ran a bit dry on this one, and that the high-gloss 90s production lent the album a coldness that did it no favors.  I’m not sure I totally agree, but I didn’t find it to be a particularly memorable addition to the canon.  For my money, Victim of Love still takes the top (bottom) spot, and I have a feeling it’ll stay that way unless one of these later albums is a total mess.

The album’s pretty par for the course for Elton’s 90s work, with big production and mostly slow-tempo ballads, wrapped up in a general air of elder statesman respectability.  The cover image, of Elton’s face made out of shards of broken plates, seems to suggest an album full of domestic unrest, but the songs don’t really bear that out (still a cool image though).

Occasionally, Elton’s maximalist pop approach serves the songs well, particularly on the uptempo gospel-pop of “If the River Can Bend,” which layers a handclappy rhythm, Davy Johnstone’s electric guitar, Elton’s keyboard, a backup choir, and more into a wall-of-sound arrangement that’s genuinely stirring.  It also elevates the opening track, “A Long Way From Happiness,” where gentle synths murmur under Elton’s piano and heavily processed drums.

The lyrics mostly find Bernie musing on domesticity and romance, contemplating whether love is inherently doomed on “The End Will Come,” yearning for a sense of freedom on “Live Like Horses,” struggling with the aftermath of a lost love on “Love’s Got a Lot to Answer For,” but also reveling in the other side on “Something in the Way You Look Tonight,” one of the album’s more moving love songs.  While none of the lyrics are cringe-worthy, I can kinda see why Bernie’s not a fan of these; the set lacks some of the clarity or poetic imagery that makes his best lyrics stick in your brain, making the end product skirt on the edge of banal at times.

I feel like I don’t have much to say about this one.  It’s another respectable set of songs, professionally done, that no doubt appealed to his fanbase.  It did pretty well, reaching number nine on the Billboard chart, but I don’t think anyone holds it up all that highly these days.  Maybe back when it came out with the two-year wait in between albums, these 90s outings seemed a bit fresher, but listening to them in short order, the fatigue is setting in.  Elton’s output will slow considerably from this point on, but I’m excited to see what the new millennium has in store.

Elton John #25: Made in England (1995)

In the interim between Duets and Made in England, Elton John made another huge leap in his career.  The soundtrack for the 1994 Disney film The Lion King, for which Elton had written the original songs with lyricist Tim Rice, became a huge success in its own right, having sold somewhere on the order of 10 million copies as of today and reaching Diamond status with the RIAA.  It also cemented Elton as not only a successful recording artist in his own right, but also as a capable writer for films and musicals; he and Rice would collaborate once again on the stage musical Aida and the 2000 animated film The Road to El Dorado.  

Which is all to say that Elton didn’t really have to keep making albums of his own–he could’ve raked in piles of cash writing for films and called it a day.  But thankfully, he’s just too much of a pro for that, and so he soldiered on, releasing Made in England in 1995.

The album’s cover art, a simple photo of Elton smiling softly in a turtleneck and tasteful round glasses, might lead you to think that this is another “back to basics” record, stripping away the excess and delivering a straightforward set of songs, but that’s not really the case.  It’s very much in his stately, adult-contemporary mode, but I think it’s a more satisfying set of songs than his other 90s output has been so far, with some enjoyably throwback tracks and a sharp, focused set of lyrics from Bernie Taupin.

Made in England also finds Elton re-teaming with Paul Buckmaster, whose string arrangements added drama to most of his 70s albums, lending his usual orchestral sweep to a few of the tracks.  It serves as a great reminder that this guy really was one of the secret weapons on Elton’s early work; his string additions here work beautifully, particularly on “Belfast,” where they subtly call out to Irish fiddle music and evoke the song’s setting.

The album also features some of Bernie’s best lyrics in quite some time, in my opinion.  The opening track, the bombastic ballad “Believe,” starts out pretty simply, with Elton singing “I believe in love, it’s all we got / love has no boundaries, costs nothing to touch,” but it gets more interesting towards the end of the song when Elton sings “without love, I’d have no anger / I wouldn’t believe in the right to stand here.”  It’s an interesting line because it shows that an expression of love doesn’t always have to be soft and sweet and tender, sometimes it’s righteous fucking indignation.  I’m not sure if Bernie is writing towards Elton’s now-out sexuality, but a line like that could easily be read that way, that love is the reason equality is worth fighting for.

The title track also features some interesting lyrics around that same theme.  It sounds like Elton angrily laying down the gauntlet, singing about childhood violence and neglect, saying to those who would be scandalized by his recent coming out, “you had a scent for scandal, well here’s my middle finger / I had forty years of pain and nothing to cling to.”  Having been forced to stay in the closet his whole life up to now, living his truth is liberating, and anyone with a problem can just piss off.

It seems that the upbringing that caused him pain also made him tough: “If you’re made in England, you’re built to last / You can still say ‘homo’ and everybody laughs / But the joke’s on you, you never read the song / They all think they know but they all got it wrong.”  I think you can read this as Elton taunting the haters, saying it was all there if you paid attention.  Given that Elton’s sexuality seems very, very clear with the benefit of hindsight, this is understandable.

There’s some really solid stuff on here, from the aforementioned tracks to the surprisingly chipper “Pain” and the stirring “Belfast,” about The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the resilience of its people.  I also really enjoyed “Please,” a bright 60s-style throwback with jangling acoustic guitar and ringing Rickenbacker-style electrics making it sound like some lost early Beatles track.

The album wraps up with the sweet “Blessed,” an ode to an imagined child and a promise to give them the best life possible, should they arrive.  It seems like the wishing paid off, since Elton now has two sons with his husband David.

Speaking of David, the album is dedicated to him, and it seems like there’s no better way to pay tribute to a new love than with an album of songs that is unapologetic about its truth.  Elton’s got nothing to hide anymore, and you can tell it’s really damn liberating.

Elton John #24: Duets (1993)

Ah, the duets album.  A time-tested moneymaker that has had a long and healthy life in the music business.  If you stick around long enough, odds are you’re gonna record one of these things, and probably make a bunch of money while you’re at it.

At the time that Elton John released Duets in 1993, I don’t think they were quite as popular as they would become (Frank Sinatra recorded his own oft-lampooned duets album the same year–check out Phil Harman’s classic spoof from SNL back in the day), though the success of this album–certified platinum in the US–probably had something to do with their eventual pervasiveness.

Elton’s entry into the genre finds him calling in a number of famous friends from across the musical spectrum for an album of mostly covers, a couple originals, and a few re-dos of old songs.  And it’s…mostly fine.  Pretty respectable, occasionally corny, but not outright embarrassing.  A mixed bag, but that’s to be expected when there’s so many cooks in the kitchen.

I think if I could pinpoint one thing that this album is missing for me, it’s a sense of fun or spontaneity.  Everything is so polished, so produced, that it doesn’t even seem like anyone’s having that great of a time.  It makes me wish Elton had just loosened up and thrown a big ol’ musical party with some of his friends, but I suppose this was probably the safer route for an artist of his stature.

Stylistically, the album’s all over the map, ranging from slow gospel ballads to contemporary R&B slow jams to even a full on club track (more on that later).  Elton acquits himself ably across the genres, leaning into the drama on “When I Think About Love (I Think About You)” with R&B act PM Dawn, or adding a little grit to the countrified “Shaky Ground” with the Eagles’ Don Henley, never really feeling too out of his element.

The first half is a bit slow, with some sappy ballads like an overproduced rendition of the old Cole Porter song “True Love” with his old “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” duet partner Kiki Dee, but things pick up a bit in the back half, starting with “Go On and On,” a duet with the great Gladys Knight written, produced, and performed by our old Discographication buddy Stevie Wonder.  The song is very much in the vein of 90s Stevie (think the better songs on Jungle Fever), with squelchy synths and a programmed (or at least programmed-sounding) rhythm, along with Stevie’s pretty standard lyrics about letting love go on and on and so forth.  You can see a lot of the songwriter’s personality coming through, which makes it a fun listen.

Next up is probably the strangest, and consequently most fun, swing on the album: a thumping House-style rendition of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” featuring current reigning Queen of America, RuPaul.  With a beat by Italian disco legend Giorgio Moroder, it leans all the way into the style, and while it’s weird to hear Elton singing over this kind of track, it gets by on charm and Ru’s surprisingly subtle supporting vocal.  In any event, it’s a lot better than the last time he tried to do dance music.

Generally, when Elton and company keep things simple, the songs work best, as they do on his take on the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell classic “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” with Marcella Detroit.  It’s a straightforward rendition that they don’t try to gunk up too much, and this approach carries over into “I’m Your Puppet,” another soul classic, this time featuring English musician Paul Young.

One of my favorite songs comes towards the end, when Elton teams up with none other than Leonard Cohen on the country standard “Born to Lose.”  Their version hews pretty closely to Ray Charles’ jazzy take from Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, and it’s really just a pleasure to hear Cohen’s deep growl intoning the sadsack country lyrics.

Elton had already released his live duet of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” with George Michael, and it had been a big hit, so he includes it here again.  The duo work well together, as they always have, and Elton’s newer, lower voice adds a welcome bit of strained grit to his verses.  The album ends on “Duets for One,” which as you might expect, is not actually a duet, but a pretty catchy little pop track.

I can’t say I really loved Duets, but it’s not an unpleasant listen either (I don’t think Elton could make an unpleasant album if he tried).  It’s mostly just kinda slow and really damn long, clocking in at about 75 minutes.  The high points are enjoyable, but I wouldn’t call any of it essential for anyone other than Elton superfans (or poor bastards who decided to listen to all his albums in order).