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

Insane -- I can't find a studio version of "Restless"! Yet fans have uploaded 620 live versions; he performed it a lot during this period, I guess.

anyway this sounds closest to the album version

"Restless"

http://youtu.be/52DgMEINazc

http://static.musictoday.com/store/bands/1940/product_medium/MUDD181.JPG

I can hear coke beginning to take its toll on his vocal. The enthusiasm substitutes for a blustery arrangement. Still, a better "Kiss the Bride."

yeah, studio version is v. close to that link. Agree his voice is starting to show some signs of wear, but the song's capable enough to fill the "Elderberry Wine"/"Saturday Night's All Right" slot on the album. With Geffen realizing Elton was the only one of his big signings to actually keep getting hits, there's pressure for a quick follow-up, so EJ, Chris Thomas and the rest grind out Breaking Hearts in a couple of weeks. I'm curious how ragged it sounds now.

Listened on Spotify to the album version. Vocal suits the song, I think. He seems to be going for a Stones vibe here.

"Slow Down Georgie" also looks impossible to find. Breaking Hearts: grievously un-YouTubed

"Who Wears These Shoes?"

http://youtu.be/PFonOVlhBWI

http://www.rock-shot.com/action/John-Elton_1984_1.jpg

Second single. More sexist drivel, and he still sounds hoarse, but the hook isn't bad. I don't remember hearing this at the time.

I do remember this one: it got some minor airplay. the guitar hook's okay but the chorus starts to become punishing around the 3-minute mark. Video is a horror (first Elton toupee appearance?)

The voice problems might be the polyps he eventually removed in '86.

Not even as good as Into the Old Man's Shoes, which I always get this one confused with. Best Elton shoe fetish song is probably Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes.

(Slow Down Georgie didn't do much for me either. Things do improve shortly though.)

"Breaking Hearts (Ain't What It Used to Be)"

http://youtu.be/4KjrgeiJlcM

http://s1.jrnl.ie/media/2012/05/PA-79880241.jpg

Always liked this one: it sounds like a refugee from Elton John sequenced after "Who Wears These Shoes." The self-pitying roue lyric works, EJ's push into falsetto in the chorus a nice touch. The lack of a bridge or solo or something to break up the run of verses/choruses does give it an overpacked feel---the song needs a bit more room to breathe.

why wasn't this tune a single instead of "Passengers"?

"Li'l Frigerator

http://youtu.be/YYt9q9F5YZo

http://cbswcbsfm.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/elton-john.jpg?w=594

or: Elton's "She's So Cold."

here's to Elton for making a halfway-listenable chorus out of Taupin's "lil' 'frigerator..get away from my soul!" points off for ersatz Chuck Berry solo and central casting '80s saxophone

I don't mind it. B-side material though.

brace yourself for tomorrow. possible all-time low of this project

too low for zero, let alone the li'l frigerator

Too lowdown bad refrigerator

"Passengers"

http://youtu.be/jH-TF0BZy44

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d_rwVsCaNHA/TailAKKnA2I/AAAAAAAAKz0/p9-KjDAhYm4/s1600/eltonjohn17.jpg

why?

Unusual for this period, a much bigger hit in England (top five).

Why?

this charted higher than every Prince single issued in Britain 1984-1989

this is barely a song. It's like some drunken bus singalong routine that somehow wound up being one of EJ's biggest hits of the mid80s

It's great, you menks. OK, it sounds like Men At Work (and even they might have thought twice about putting this on one of their albums) but as vaguely "ethnic" new wave pop goes, we had to put up with much worse in the early 80s.

Actually, I must have heard it dozens of times on the radio before I realised it was Elton.

I've read praise for this song occasionally 'round here.

At last! One of my most hated songs ever. Even as a 10-year-old listening to the radio I was like, "What IS this shit?"

it has something to do with apartheid and things

It certainly has the power to terrorise a government into changing its ways.

this was a hit? i have absolutely no recollection of this existing. it's not terrible at all. it might even be good. it sounds like a piece of paul mccartney schlock that could have wound up on the white album as easily as it could have wound up on pipes of peace, and no matter what decade it was you'd ask yourself why is paul mccartney doing this, but then you'd wake up one day and rhe song would suddenly pop into your head, separated from all context, and you'd think to yourself, "wow, this is pretty damn catchy. he was pretty good at that,"

and now that i've let the album keep playing in the background and i'm hearing the proper singer-songwriter elton john stuff that follows, i'm kind of wishing for more like it.

i may wake up tomorrow and feel differently, though.

also, as vaguely ethnic pop goes, i'll take this over "ob-la-di ob-la-da," "island girl" or anything i can remember off the top of my head from "the lion king," which admittedly is not much, but still.

it sounds like a piece of paul mccartney schlock that could have wound up on the white album as easily as it could have wound up on pipes of peace,

yeah, it's a bit like if McCartney had hit #5 with "Temporary Secretary."

more like "Waterfalls"

or "mull of kintyre."

"In Neon"

http://youtu.be/Pe_4rZwegLc

http://eil.com/Gallery/298530b.jpg

A single in America. Better than "Passengers" -- barely.

Elton resembles mid-period Orson Welles on that single sleeve

I have a very dim memory of this one: the "in NEON" hook rang a bell when I heard it again. A vaguely-country "Candle in the Wind" sequel with a chorus that Elton has to sell a bit too hard. As w/ "Passengers," it's odd that this got the single nod when EJ had the title track as an option

some quality parentheses going on.

"Burning Bridges"

http://youtu.be/_o9M9EW-aRk

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/_wgXA9ZnjHg/0.jpg

Another absurd Taupin metaphor (maybe he listened to Talking Heads' "Love --> Building on Fire") but in the service of a good ballad. I'm thinking that the erosion of Elton's high end has made him a better balladeer -- if the material is sturdy.

agreed that his voice is in a nice place here. the arrangement is very captain fantastic (something about the keyboard sounds and the backing vocals, especially). but the melody falls just a hair short, and the joylessness on display here is part of what had me begging for more "passengers" a couple days ago.

yeah a bit of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" in the melody/arrangement. Even by Taupin standards the lyric is ridiculous. You get the sense EJ took on Taupin's most batshit lines like they were Saturday-level NY Times crossword puzzles. & he almost solves it here! but all those clunky "ing" rhymes in the chorus take him down.

"Did He Shoot Her?"

http://youtu.be/CiAgM8VgSFM

http://cloud.lomography.com/576/406/75/f1af89f557af9ca53a9ab28361acc3d9d36378.jpg

poor Renata

so what the hell is this thing?

he shot her with a barrage of tortured metaphors. and she used to be my girl, so now i will do the same to him. also, "it's the 20th century now."

as always, we will forgive bernie when elton figures out that saturday crossword that his lyrics pose (nice way to put it, col). not that he needs our forgiveness; elton has the power to actually make his lyrics be good. elton, unfortunately, does not come close to solving the puzzle here.

poor Renata indeed. Maybe one day there'll be a Todd Haynes film inspired by her

this is a bit of car wreck---Elton seems to be throwing out everything he can think of and nothing really works. Is there sitar in this thing? Surprised there isn't a vuvuzela solo by the end of it

love to imagine Taupin heard Richard & Linda Thompson's "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?" and was inspired to write this.

Tomorrow: the classic.

So Breaking Hearts is a notch below TLFZ. Bashing out in two weeks in early '84 isn't the same as bashing it out in two weeks in early '73.