Mama Can't Buy You Love: The Official ILM Track-By-Track ELTON JOHN 1978-1988 Listening Thread

I gotta say: its success mystifies me. The electric piano part, the chorus horns – ick.

I have some fondness for this one solely out of nostalgia: it embodies the kitschy "adult pop" world ca. '79-'81, the Christopher Cross/Player/ "Music Box Dancer"/"Stumblin' In" etc world that I heard on the radio and was my first concept of pop music. agree it's icky but you can't deny the hooks, either.

I also can't ever hear it without recalling how the kids on my school bus renamed it "Little Weenie," a title that made the rest of the song ludicrous ("I want you to be my acrobat!")

Apparently it was a hit the old fashioned way: it got on the radio and people kept requesting it and buying copies (it's certified gold back when gold meant shipping a million).

this, of course, becomes Elton's survival formula for the rest of this survey: however crap the album, crank one hit off it and you're good for another year (exceptions include The Fox, natch)

"Sartorial Eloquence"

http://youtu.be/LB1rim3VXo0

http://www.ioffer.com/img3/item/141/940/781/elton-john-live-in-central-park-+bonus-footage-1980-dvd-46c8.jpg

lyrics by Tom Robinson!

The second single.

A crowded arrangement: high synth, rhythm guitar strums, backing vocals, piano, all on the chorus.

Only clicking on this thread sporadically to see if you've got to Passengers yet. One of the worst singles of the 80s.

and a top five in England. How odd.

When I was 10. It's one of the few songs I distinctly remember hating at that age. Looking at the lyrics now, it seems to be a protest song but about what I'm not exactly clear.

apparently cracked the US top 40 too, but I don't recall hearing it

Figured I'd jump in to remind ya'll this one ("Sartorial Eloquence") features among the many voices on the chorus ilm's favorite douchecanoe harmony duo...

DON: After years of being fans, it was an honor to actually take part in a session with our friend Elton during one of his lowest periods, both personally and creatively. I honestly feel our Eagle harmony magic elevated his song right where it was needed most.

GLENN: Speaking of being elevated, I think between us Don & I lost a whole pack of cough drops in the, er, echo chambers that night.

DON: Well, yeah.

Congrats. You've mastered the Henley sincerity.

"Two Rooms at the End of the World"

http://youtu.be/bzTKdafOnAo

http://www.ioffer.com/img3/item/141/940/781/elton-john-live-in-central-park-+bonus-footage-1980-dvd-46c8.jpg

was this album some kind of make-work program for underemployed session musicians? There's like 50 people on this track, including a prominent cowbeller.

abt 3 minutes in, I realized "2 Rooms" was just going to be the same tune-lite verse-refrain repeated over and over again, and resigned myself to it, and suddenly it became a Chicago record for a bit.

That's the problem with the album (so far): not bad melodies smothered by desperate arrangements.

ode to a muse:

"White Lady White Powder"

studio version not on YT (it's on Grooveshark/Spotify) but here's the live version from Central Park '80:

http://youtu.be/7BbismoORP0

http://eil.com/images/main/Elton%2BJohn%2B-%2BWhite%2BLady%2BWhite%2BPowder%2B-%2B7%2522%2BRECORD-498449.jpg

lol @ white man danger

brace yrself for that one. Political satire by B. Taupin

This is the first okay song we've heard in days. The piano has boogie, the lyrics don't interfere.

this got some radio play when it came out and i remember young me thinking this song was a sign that elton was back. i also remember young me hearing the rest of the album and thinking i had been wrong.

today it sounds like a hybrid of glam-period elton and 21st century nashville (the "and she's a habit i can't handle / for a reason i can't say..." part). i also think it would work pretty well on billy joel's glass houses, which came out a couple months before this. i like it.

"Dear God"

http://youtu.be/V_7e7DDOTCU

http://991.com/NewGallery/Elton-John-Dear-God---Double-58628.jpg

think the Almighty Himself would be nodding off around 2 minutes into this one

you beat me!

I was just navigating around the live clip that automatically came up

when did EJ start owning his baldness (or wearing toupees)? the "strategic hat" photos are getting ridiculous

"Never Gonna Fall in Love Again"

http://youtu.be/j65aY2w85RM

http://www.rockpeaks.com/files/eggs/j/John-Elton/057358-John-Elton-Ego-Central-Park-1980_0.jpg

Another sitcom theme, complete with electric piano. Lyrics by Tom Robinson, but you can't tell.

sort of thing that would crop up in some grim late '70s-early '80s middle-aged sex comedy, like "Blame it On Rio": the Robinson lyric has the singer as being on the prowl ("everywhere there's lot of foxes!") but the track's so limp and schlocky that it feels like embalming fluid's entering yr veins when you listen to it. Chorus is fourth-rate by EJ standards; the sub-"Baker Street" sax break doesn't help matters

Five b-sides approaching. Should we post two of those a day?

yeah, that works. i can't imagine the caliber of B-side we're talking about here

I can't find "Take Me Back" so here's:

"Give Me the Love"

http://youtu.be/

http://www.rockpeaks.com/files/imagecache/body/eggs/j/John-Elton/057358-John-Elton-Ego-Central-Park-1980_0.jpg

Don't forget the two France Gall duets.
― Jeff W, Monday, 30 December 2013

"Conquer the Sun" (UK b-side)

http://youtu.be/Se1w-U-Uq30

How on earth can you conquer the sun with these tempos?

ok, recap:

"Take Me Back": Elton countrypolitan with his Tumbleweed Connection voice cropping up in the bridge like a smoker's cough, complete with that inescapable "Little Jeannie" electric piano and a Hollywood approximation of a fiddle solo.

"Give Me the Love": no, pay for it, you skunk.

Strange record, 21:33. Objectively it's not that much different from, say, Piano Player but the hit single's no "Daniel" (even if you hate "Daniel") and the filler's mainly overcooked goo. I think Single Man holds up a lot better than this.

"Conquer the Sun": big, booming, dull chorus: an organ transplant (that didn't take) to a diseased body.

"conquer the sun" verses remind me, in a totally not bad way, of first-album elton. choruses remind me of what it would be like if oasis were asked to write smarmy ballads for a "lion king" sequel in 2018.

the two B-sides of "Sartorial Eloquence":

"Cartier"

http://youtu.be/xqgOD99xqyQ

"White Man Danger!!!"

http://youtu.be/P3FzM8BENJQ

http://www.eltonjohnitaly.com/sartorial-spagna.jpg

The Clash - "White Man Danger-Cartier Commercial"

Strange record, 21:33. Objectively it's not that much different from, say, Piano Player but the hit single's no "Daniel" (even if you hate "Daniel") and the filler's mainly overcooked goo. I think Single Man holds up a lot better than this.

Yep. A Single Man is a notch worse than peak-period Elton but if "Part-Time Love" hadn't flopped no one would've noticed this fact, while 21 at 33 sounds like aesthetic decline and David Geffen-here-I-come.

alfred, should we do the 3 B-sides of "Dear God" in one go? then on to the lest-we-forget France Gall duets

Go for it!

"Tactics"

http://youtu.be/pkd-Xh8bNxY

man, the success of "Music Box Dancer" really galled EJ, no?

"Steal Away Child"

http://youtu.be/-VvT5_ZYGLw

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/eb951vy0LYA/hqdefault.jpg

My nose hairs fell out the second those synths at the 0:50 mark started.

It's "The Final Countdown" six years early!

"Love So Cold"

http://youtu.be/eV720KrCj4g

oh good, we haven't had a "Caribbean" Elton track in a while

christ, what sounds like the elec. piano from Supertramp's "Logical Song" turns up in that last one

oh cool: the electric piano mimics steel drums

"That's why they call 'em B-sides," my father, 1980, when I complained about Queen's "Don't Try Suicide" on the "Another One Bites the Dust" single