Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - the POLL

tempted to vote for jamaican jerk-off

Island Girl is a much better Caribbean track than "Jerk-Off", imho

oooh, Elton singles poll would be nice...

Elton John Greatest Hits Vol. 1

Mo' Elton -- Greatest Hits, 1976-1986 (for Greatest Hits, Vol. 3)

You Wanted It (I Think), So Here It Is ... Elton John's "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2"

Thanks...those are polls?

yes, polls, merci

haha i forgot that i did those polls way back when.

wouldn't mind a poll that included singles from Elton's wilderness years (which aren't in these threads): stuff like "Ego," "Song For Guy," "Elton's Song," "Nobody Wins," etc.

Wow, I actually forgot I started this thread! Wonder why I gave it so much time. Can't remember if I voted. Need to listen to the record again.

Off topic, but HOW could EJ play for Rush Limbaugh for a million bucks? Yuk!

you answered your own question!

David Hentschel for president! :)
who dis?

Word, he has a wikipedia... I think most people assume Elton John played all the keyboards on "Funeral For A Friend."

man i can't believe "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" won one of those singles polls, that's like his only '70s hit that i straight up hate.

wouldn't mind a poll that included singles from Elton's wilderness years (which aren't in these threads): stuff like "Ego," "Song For Guy," "Elton's Song," "Nobody Wins," etc.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 13, 2012 12:31 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd vote for 'Song For Guy' immediately.

Did "Grow some funk" ever get compiled onto any other EJ hits compilation that wasn't "every single" styled? (or "Ego"?)

I'd love to see a poll of the singles from his underrepresented wilderness period (1977-1982).

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, December 12, 2007 10:58 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

granted, most of them suck (no one mention "Little Jeannie," please).

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, December 12, 2007 10:58 AM Bookmark

is that a zing? I know what I think; I wanted to read others defend "Part Time Love."

Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding is a helluva fucking way tos tart the album, so...that

Haha, no, no, not a zing at all! I'm always catching myself re-stating the exact same point I made like four years ago, it's one of the small joys of ILX for me honestly.

I would enjoy watching such a poll but I don't think I'd know any of the songs on it at all.

I thought I voted in this already... i selected "all the girls love alice" and it turns out that I hadn't.

Ahh hell, voted "Grey Seal," not necessarily because it's better than "Love Lies Bleeding," but just because it really is such an earwormy thing, lot of different little hooks and things that pop up when you least expect them. Plus obviously, less overexposed and still sounds fresh.

Warning, stay away from "Love Lies Bleeding" at karaoke - thankfully they don't put you through the whole "Funeral For a Friend" sequence (although that would be kind of amazing if it was the first song of the night) but the lonnnnnnng solo/breakdown in the midst of LLB, though totally awesome on record, is tough to do much with when you're one man and a microphone.

Seriously, how f--in' rich is Elton John? For a million bucks? Sorry, that don't hold water

All the Girls Love Alice was #2 in the GYBR Misoygny poll....

Actually, my dad claimed that he used to play tennis in Laguna Beach in the 70s with a guy who played piano/keyboards for EJ in the studio--said he was like a grad student in astrophysics at Berkeley at the same time or something...maybe that's the guy

Dr Casino, also stay away from "Song for Guy" at karaoke.

Yep, seen it...

speaking of the wilderness era, we did this poll..

Mo' Elton -- Greatest Hits, 1976-1986 (for Greatest Hits, Vol. 3)

oh and Grow Some Funk is on Greatest Hits 2 if that counts..

This is hard, there are six or seven I could vote for here. Tempted to go for '...Danny Bailey', I love the way the chorus sounds kind of queasy. 'Harmony' is hard to beat though.

There's a bit of the guitar break in 'Love Lies Bleeding' that's always reminded me of Hüsker Dü for some reason.

this album is finally starting to grow on me. Side C is my sweet spot, it turns out. voted for "All The Girls Love Alice."

ha -- what Rob Sheffield called the Dirty Girls Trilogy.

I still reckon that "Captain Fantastic" is his pinnacle, and not only because he kept it single. But this is still a pretty strong double album.

Looking at that Greatest Hits poll linked to above, it puzzles me that "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" would clean up.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing - I love the song, but with that kind of competition I'd expect a much more even distribution. Hrm.

I keep reviving Geir's Captain Fantastic thread - "Captain Fantastic" C/D? - so maybe it's someone else's turn. Amazing album.

Was going to vote for "Harmony" but what I kept hearing in my head was that piano intro to "Bennie and the Jets" so I went with that.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Excellent!

YES

AND LOVE LIVES BLEEEEEEEEEEDIN IN MY HANDS
OH IT KILLS ME TO THINK OF YOU WITH ANOTHER MAN
I WAS PLAYIN ROCK 'N ROLL AND YOU WERE JUST A FAN
BUT MY GUITAR COULDN'T HOLD YOU SO I QUIT THE BAAAAAAAAAAA-AH-AH-UH-AAAAAAAHND

LLUHV lies BLEEDin in mah HAYNNND!

Great turnout and great spread of votes - thanks for playing, y'all!

Deserved winner and, yes, deserved spread. There are many ballads I could have gone for here, but then there goes one of the best album openers ever.

My vote was first and foremost for "Funeral For a Friend" though.

"The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909–34)" 4:23 1
"I've Seen That Movie Too" 5:59 1

I'm just happy these got any votes at all.

I get the impression "Candle In The Wind" didn't really resonate as a "signature song" until the live version came out which was around, like... 1988 seems correct.

Would people still hate that song without this context? I figured it was considered more of a deep album cut until the late 80's.. For example, it wasn't on the original "greatest hits".. The one that sold 90 million copies..

Which is interesting because "Border Song" is hardly one of his signature songs, and yet until the late 80's I would bet more people had heard that song than Candle In The Wind.

I thought it was the Lady Di death that brought it into the mainstream

The live version from the late 80's got a shitton of airplay.

yeah i definitely knew it as a semi-big EJ hit before 1997 (unlike "Tiny Dancer," which i had never heard before That Movie and is now one of his biggest classic rock radio staples)

very good point re Candle not being on the Hits album. that's very suprising.

I'm pretty sure I heard "Tiny Dancer" on adult-contemp stations throughout the 80s IIRC... easily played just as often as the big hits. I knew it from a pretty young age, although if I'm remembering incorrectly, then it would have just been from my parents playing the records throughout my childhood.

This was part of the reason I was bothered by SPIN placing "Tiny Dancer" in their top 20 singles of 2000... My reaction was like, "Wtf, I've loved that song all along.. Just because charles aaron (or whoever) couldn't figure out that it was a good song prior to Almost Famous means everyone else felt the exact same way?" I considered that a lame assumption.

Every time I hear the intro to "Danny Baily" my mind goes to some nerd-core song called "Bad Driver" that sampled it. MC Chris maybe? Internet isn't turning up much.

xxp aw, "Yell Help" is so bizarre it's funny - like what the hell is he going on about?

lol I've never actually paid attention to the lyrics before. what a train-wteck - the Taupin down-home affectation machine, missing its poetic imagery module, and crashing into a bunch of miscellaneous overheard-in-the-studio inanity. "i wish tonight wasn't Wednesday night" is the kind of thing Paul McCartney could MAYBE get away with, if it was an ad-lib in a silly voice during the fadeout...

"Grow Some Funk," "Robert Ford," and "Hard Luck Stories" are good to great.

The weird thing about "Hard Luck Story" is that it seems to be written for a female singer complaining about a man unloading his problems on her (it's credited to the pseudonyms that John and Taupin used for their "outside" writing); but Elton's singing it as a man, and instead of switching the genders, it seems like they reversed all the pronouns and he sings it as the man "explaining" to the woman that she is fed up with him. Surely it would make more sense to sing "All I hear is hard luck stories" rather than "All you hear are hard luck stories".

Anyway, the Westies/Blue Moves band really was great and served those songs well.

I think I really must be the only person on Earth, apart from the hordes who bought it at the time, that really digs Elton's Lucy.

For me the easy expansiveness of Elton's version makes it much better than the tweeness of the Beatles' original.