Bernie Taupin Is A Godawful Lyricist Whose Lyrics Sound Amazing Coming Out Of Elton John's Mouth — ILM ARTIST POLL #41: ELTON JOHN

Tracks:
1. Rocket Man
2. Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
3. Grey Seal
4. I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues
5. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
6. Philadelphia Freedom
7. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
8. The Ballad of Danny Bailey
9. Don't Go Breaking My Heart
10. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
11. I Think I'm Going To Kill Myself
12. Honky Cat
13. Blues For My Baby And Me
14. I Don't Want To Go On With You Like That
15. I'm Gonna Be A Teenage Idol
16. Madman Across The Water
17. Bennie And The Jets
18. Tiny Dancer
19. The Bitch Is Back
20. I Want Love

Most Hated:
1. Something About The Way You Look Tonight
2. Can You Feel The Love Tonight
3. Wrap Her Up

Wish "I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself" would've placed higher (although I don't think I've even heard it in over a decade).

I still have a lot of Elton listening to do, there's a lot of stuff in these results that I'm still not at all familiar with. I'm so glad we did this, I've gotten a huge kick out of it!

Thanks so much Johnny Fever for stepping in and for rolling it out!

My pleasure! This last three-ish weeks of EJ listening has been fun for me too!

Thank you very much Johnny Fever for running this poll. There will always be a special place for it in the Tower of Babel of my heart.

Here is my ballot. Better Off Dead wuz robbed!

1. Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
2. Tiny Dancer
3. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
4. Grey Seal
5. Your Song
6. Your Sister Can't Twist But She Can Rock n Roll
7. The Ballad of Danny Bailey
8. Better Off Dead
9. Little Jeannie
10. I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues
11. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
12. All the Girls Love Alice
13. Levon
14. Razor Face
15. Candle In The Wind
16. Rotten Peaches
17. Take Me To The Pilot
18. Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting
19. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
20. Philadelphia Freedom

good job, here was mine

tracks
1. philadelphia freedom
2. funeral for a friend/love lies bleeding
3. someone saved my life tonight
4. take me to the pilot
5. all the girls love alice
6. street kids
7. madman across the water
8. amoreena
9. i’m still standing
10. saturday night’s alright for fighting
11. honky cat
12. the bitch is back
13. goodbye yellow brick road
14. tiny dancer
15. the last song
16. sacrifice
17. levon
18. sorry seems to be the hardest word
19. i don’t want to go on with you like that
20. rocket man

albums
1. tumbleweed connection
2. honky chateau
3. captain fantastic and the brown dirt cowboy
4. goodbye yellow brick road
5. madman across the water

5 worst
1. jamaica jerk-off
2. lucy in the sky with diamonds
3. johnny b. goode
4. island girl
5. your song

enjoyed shakey's counterpoint, not sure how many other artists such a thing would work for, you'd need a massively successful artist w/ no real critical consensus and ambiguity around just how good they actually are and why. i think of a similar artist like rod stewart (who seems to me a more obv counterpoint to elton though that might just be some linkage formed when they went in the rrhof the same year, plus knowing that elton apparently talked rod out of doing the pinball wizard role in tommy before swooping in and doing it himself) and there the obv great stuff is so obv great that a snarky dismissal of 'every picture tells a story' or whatever would just come off as challops while a snarky dismissal of the obv not great 'love touch' would just be a redundant. the bowie comparison shakey and few others bang on is apparent enough that it came up in the big rolling stone interview (where elton just rolls his eyes at bowie's cattiness and a seeming understanding of 'i am a massive popular artist and a total pro and when you're those things you will use whatever useful thing is at hand'; seems way more apparent in the aftermath that bowie envied elton's sales alot more than elton envied bowie's brilliance), the two big rockers that shakey specifically mentions as bowie rips - 'the bitch is back', 'saturday' - have always seemed to me to be fairly straightforward stones rips, albeit early 70s ergo glam; i can certainly hear bowie's 'let's spend the night together' or 'watch that man' as comparisons but still, same clade. i'll also agree w/ the couple of ppl who noted that they used to never hear 'the bitch is back' and now it's suddenly seemingly one of his most played on classic rock and oldies radio (and w/o the obv reason for the upturn that 'tiny dancer' has).

elsewhere: sincere regrets i didn't vote for 'i guess that's why they call it the blues', sincere annoyance 'street kids' didn't make the countdown or pick up a single other vote despite my campaigning for it even and posting that wonderful 'best vines of the 20th century' style video some dork made. which reminds me that the first time i heard 'funeral for a friend/love lies bleeding' was when my uncle gathered us all into his living room in front of his big screen tv to watch a video he had made (at a time when even camcorders were somewhat exotic, nevermind video editing etc) of him snow skiing soundtracked by it, w/ first just the landscape/daunting scenery/etc and then him bam! skiing when the 'funeral' finally kicks in w/ the tesh. i can still hear my dad approvingly nodding and saying 'ah - funeral for a friend' when the video started. my family will occasionally drag out this audio recording i made when i was six of me singing '9 to 5' and just lol it up but i really do need to mention 'at least i wasn't a GROWN MAN making everyone sit thru some eleven minute home movie of me snow skiing set to some elton john prog epic'.

This thread kinda baffles me. I think too many voters grew up in the '80s instead of the '70s, which might explain how a glass of lukewarm piss like "Little Jeanie" made the list. The last few big hits of the '70s--Island Girl, Grow Some Funk, Don't Go Breaking... (but not Sorry Seems to Be...)--showed that his long creative peak was starting to fade, but "Little Jeanie" was the moment he died and zombie Elton John took over.

And another thing... If an Elton-as-bottom-half-of-a-duet song like "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" could get a few votes, where the fuck is "Bad Blood"?!

80s hardly seems overrepresented to me and tbh i'm somewhat surprised and pleased at the number of album cuts that made it considering just how many damn hit singles you're talking about and how easily or even likely it would be for a person who only knew elton from the radio to whip up a ballot.

I basically agree about all the '80s hits, but just put that down to a generational thing: if Elton made a good single after about 1975, I'd lost all interest by then and simply wasn't going to hear it.

(I used to like "Bad Blood" when it was on the radio. I gave it a listen when somebody posted a YouTube link upthread and it didn't hold up for me.)

I don't think it's even necessarily generational. I just think there are some ilxors who gravitate towards that sound or at least don't reject it out of hand like some of us (ie me) tend to...that's why the voting thread is good because you can read some really considered thoughts about material you'd already dismissed, and then you find that maybe with new ears it's not as terrible sounding as you thought

this happened a little bit with me in the Stones thread as well. I blame Alfred and Ismael, basically :)

I liked gated drums and wimpy synths when they were cool, then when they weren't, and still do now that they're cool again. It's my comfort zone.

42 out of 50 tracks were from the 70s, so it's not like the later stuff dominated in any way.

Yeah, I thought it was cool that they made it to be honest, although I would never have placed any of them so high. But this is one of the most interesting polls I've followed specifically because he's usually regarded by rockists as a lightweight or a pop sideshow, therefore they haven't written a canon, therefore it really is up for grabs. Plenty of stuff in the 20s that you could as easily imagine as the top 5, and tons of album cuts. Great results.

Re: joel, i'm in, partly to make up for my foolish decision to give up 'classic rock canon.' Will put my quarter down when the dust settles on Order & Timing.

The eighties aren't overrepresented! The entries that made it arw part of his basic canon.

We may not like it but "Start Me Up" is part of the Stones canon. I don't see how "I'm Still Standing" or "I Guess That's Why..." wouldn't be represented.

there's an obvious answer but imma roll zing-free here...

for real though tattoo you's a special case since mick at least knew they were creatively tapped and virtually all of the material is stitched together from like the previous 8 years of writing and recording

the bitch is back', 'saturday' - have always seemed to me to be fairly straightforward stones rips

i think that's the first time the stones have been mentioned on this thread, which is weird, 'cause elton borrowed a lot from them. the southern americana of "no shoestrings on louise." the horns on "elderberry wine." and all that guitar stuff like "saturday," of course. but he was obviously listening to bowie too. and bowie was listening to the stones and borrowing from them too. they're both sponges.

"bad blood" is fantastic. i assumed there wasn't quite enough elton in it to merit a vote in this particular poll. bring on the sedaka poll.

"i miss the earth so much/i miss my wife" > "tell my wife i love her very much/she knows"

I used heard the former as a comma rather than the slash that's here..

like, "It's got so bad up here I actually miss my wife"

I hear it as a comma too, and used the slash only to be consistent with a previous post quoting the Bowie lyric.

I just liked the juxtaposition of those two statements, in that order. It puts me in the shoes of the titular character, flying alone for a long time in my spacecraft in a different galaxy, pondering which I would miss more, my spouse or just planet earth in general?

well, thesedays I don't think elton/bernie actually meant it that way

hmm, did not know this:

Solo albums[edit source]
1971 Taupin
1980 He Who Rides The Tiger
1987 Tribe

With Farm Dogs[edit source]
1996 Last Stand in Open Country
1998 Immigrant Sons

Well done, everyone. Top 2 spot on.

(Not keen on "Tiny Dancer" but maybe if it had been a hit over here in '71 (the UK was pretty much ignoring Elton circa Madman), I'd feel differently about it. As it is, I'd never heard it until Almost Famous.)

My ballot:
Songs

01. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
02. Ego
03. Are You Ready For Love?
04. Philadelphia Freedom
05. Honky Cat
06. Burn Down The Mission
07. Tonight
08. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
09. Sixty Years On
10. Funeral For A Friend / Love Lies Bleeding

11. Rocket Man (I think it's going to be a long long time)
12. Nobody Wins
13. Grey Seal
14. I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford)
15. Better Off Dead
16. Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
17. Passengers
18. Madman Across The Water
19. Take Me To The Pilot
20. Skyline Pigeon

LPs
1. 17-11-70
2. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
3. The Union [w/ Leon Russell] <-- placement is trolling but there is some good stuff on this, check it out
4. Honky Château
5. Greatest Hits, Volume II

1, 4 and 5 above are the first EJ records I bought, within days of each other, so nostalgia's playing a big part here. In retrospect, I should have found room for Blue Moves.

Worst songs
1. Candle In The Wind '97
2. Grow Some Funk Of Your Own
3. Circle of Life

Thanks to J Fever for running this, long overdue, poll.

"Nobody Wins "!

haha oh man I just saw the post where Shakey says it's "kind of a toss-up" whether Elton John or David Bowie is a better piano player

Yeah, A-plus to Shakey for making like two dozen posts in character as OG rockist strawman before anyone bothered to point it out. I do actually agree that some of the slower songs can be on the samey side, but the rest was just bonkers. I say this as someone who's had ''Ballad of a Well-Known Gun'' and ''My Father's Gun'' on alternating mental shuffle for the past eight hours, so I just can't take the criticism as far as ''oh yeah these songs have nothing at all to offer and are boring and forgettable.'' Dude knew a hook, and the arrangements/playing add so much detail and little micro-hooks and surprises. Yeah, they don't usually need to go past four minutes, but there's a lot more in those four minutes than you'd expect to find.

the chinese piano re: honky cat = pinnacle of shakey ITT

Note to self, when I have a computer in front of me rather than a phone, write out five-paragraph, line-by-line explanation of why ''Captain Fantastic'' is one of the greatest songs in Elton's catalog.

I'd be interested to read it, because that song means nothing to me.

Consulting my newly purchased book of Billboard Top Ten charts, I note that Captain Fantastic, after debuting at #1 and staying there for six weeks and returning for a seventh about six weeks later, fell out of the top ten at the end of September 1975. In November, Rock of the Westies debuted at #1: by any standards phenomenal productivity and sales figures. No wonder he burned out a year later.

I was going to be all "LOL u bought a book of Billboard charts?! hahah" ...and then I saw it was you. As you were. :)

Elton's new album The Diving Board is out today, lyrics by Bernie, production by T-Bone Burnett, stripped down rhythm section consisting of Jack Ashford of the Funk Brothers on drums and Raphael Saadiq (!) on bass. not amazing or anything but pretty enjoyable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UttbDHa1uSg

Was planning on giving it a spin soon.

Barry Walters gives EJ the icon treatment and rather well too:

http://www.emusic.com/music-news/icon/emusic-icon-elton-john/

Elton talks...lots of unexpected choices. Great comments.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/elton-john-my-life-in-20-songs-20131010?utm_source=dailynewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

"Crocodile Rock"
Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player, 1973

Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player was my first U.K. Number One album. It had "Daniel," which was pure pop, but there were also songs like "Elderberry Wine" and "Teacher I Need You." And of course it spawned "Crocodile Rock," which was the song that probably changed the critics' opinion of me. It was a really blatant homage to Speedy Gonzales and all the great Fifties and Sixties records that we used to love, like Danny and the Juniors' "At the Hop." My career wasn't about "Crocodile Rock" – it was just a one-off thing – but it became a huge hit record, and in the long run, it became a negative for me, because people said, "Oh, fucking 'Crocodile Rock.' " I'd never started off as a hit writer, and I didn't know what a hit was, and it's evidenced on my first four albums. Rolling Stone reviewed it and gave it two stars, and I said, "Oh, fuck off." It was a great fucking pop record. Shut the fuck up. - haha fair enough

''Speedy Gonzales''?

http://youtu.be/O4HT51a4VHY

haha wow that is really blatant

That is an awful, awful song. But wow re: the Elton connection.

i wish there was an audio version of this interview in which scarface recites some classic bernie taupin lyrics.

Oh, and Speedy Gonzales to Bruce Springsteen, also.

Finally digging into Blue Moves after ages of dismissing it based on the cover art and not knowing any of the songs, figured it would just be a wash of faceless dreary ballads. But actually there's some rockin' here, and some really cool arrangements and musical surprises. It's very very well-recorded, for sure. Still getting to know it so I can't call out any specific moments, but I kinda think it's at least better than Caribou as a listening experience, even though it's nearly twice as long, largely underwritten (so many instrumentals!) and lacks that album's two big hits (both true grab-you-by-the-ears standouts). I dunno, it just seems less stupid.

If the same material had just been worked on longer, filling out the instrumentals as memorable songs in themselves, who knows what might have been? It came out one year after Rock of the Westies, also an album with some problems; if he'd been on a 1990s release schedule, the best material from those two together could have yielded a platter at least as good as Honky Chateau or Don't Shoot Me.... Just need to do something about the sleeves...

I never enjoyed recording studios! I loved the process of writing, but I never enjoyed the process of being in the studio. I always felt like a caged lion

--bernie taupin

RFI: With search engine disabled, can't seem to find the thread the title quote is from

it was the elton john voting thread and it was my quote and i can't seem to find it either. but if i had a copy editor, it would've been shortened to "bernie taupin writes godawful lyrics that sound amazing coming out of elton john's mouth."

It might be on the voting thread, but he first time you said it was about a decade ago.

Found it: Elton John

Elton has many great, weird songs.

Hang the fuck on, did 'Song for Guy' not place!?