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

"Big Dipper"

THIS is more like it: genre exercise that could've fit on Side Three of GYBR or the second half of Caribou but still rather hysterically over-arranged.

yeah, this is pretty fun. the music's a clunky pastiche of Little Feat, Leon Redbone and factory-setting "New Orleans jazz," and the lyric is the sort of double entendre that an 11-year-old would write, but at least this kinda swings. Chorus sunk by too many amateur voices colliding (acc. to Elton's biographer, singers include the staff of Rocket Records and members of the Watford Football Club)

It Ain't Gonna Be Easy

http://youtu.be/4f74wD6hltg

http://bernardmitchell.co.uk/images/stories/blog_images/elton_john_ron_rollitt.jpg

Eight minutes! I feared the worst but:

-- The guitar fills sting

-- Paul Buckmaster's strings, while unnecessary, hugs Elton's vocal without smothering it.

This sounds like another Thom Bell session remake, but don't think it was. Agree that the guitar and Buckmaster are the stars here (and their interplay in the coda is great), but Elton's back in fine voice here too. It really builds for once.

so far this is one weird record. Big brooding Philly Soul numbers cheek-by-jowl with garish, charmless novelties

I listened to it again. I'll take a risk and say this is a Good Song and Performance -- the sort of lost gem for which I hoped this and the Eagles thread were created.

genre exercise that could've fit on Side Three of GYBR or the second half of Caribou but still rather hysterically over-arranged

kind of a poor man's caribou though. the whole thing's a bit too on the nose, and it doesn't quite rock in the way that even the ballads and genre exercises on caribou do.

but his singing voice has thankfully returned!

and the voice is still there for "it ain't gonna be easy," which is poor man's madman across the water, sort of.

or rich man's Madman Across the Water.

ha!

time for the album's "hit"

Part-Time Love

http://youtu.be/xbUAglsS_8o

http://www.importsounds.com/images/ELTON-JOHN_PART-TIME-LOVE_061512.JPG

His first lead single to miss the US top twenty in years. Forgotten too. I like the Philly swing of the backing vocals.

I don't recall this (it hit #21 or something) which is odd because, due to personal circumstances in '78-'80 (being shuttled for an hour each day to school by someone who listened to Roanoke's only top 40 station), even the more obscure singles from that era are stuck deep in the memory well.

It's okay, but it sounds kind of sickly, half-cooked pop--you can hear EJ willing the song forward in the latter half of the verses: "I'm Elton John, damn it, I'm going to make this thing work!" Guitar hook sounds like the theme song of an afternoon news show. Some fun over-the-top Buckmaster scoring, esp. in the bridges

This was probably the first Elton John song I knew, because as a young kid I'd frequently hear my older brother sing the chorus hook which he evidently couldn't get out of his head. You! Me! Ev-er-y-body!! He'd sing the "you", tried to get me to sing the "me", and we'd both sing the "everybody" before he finished the rest of the line. This is how we passed the time on long drives in the back of the station wagon. I learned several songs this way, since I didn't have a radio or a record player back then. I didn't learn until decades later what song this was or who sang it.

The original RS review by Stephen Holden.

A Single Man demonstrates just how thin the line really is between disposable radio pop and elevator music, and suggests that for all of Elton John's public whining about not being taken seriously, the only thing that's ever mattered to him is that the hits keep coming. May they not.

"Georgia"

http://youtu.be/yBCPZktTBsU

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XHW-IERrCAE/TxJDT4gOSlI/AAAAAAAAcTk/AMM0trm2Gaw/s1600/Studio+54+Elton+John+at+Studio+54+Rocket+Party%252C+July%252C+1978.jpg

Another not unpleasant retread, this time of his early habit (or Taupin's) of constructing a bauble around a geographic or thematic abstraction ("Slave," "Hercules").

"Good Old Boys" without the irony; "Tumbleweed Connection" without the (Taupin-led) attempts at "naturalism"--like Alfred said, it's a song about a postcard image. Ode to Jimmy Carter? Who knows.

sounds like something a british lyricist would write having heard the word "georgia" but otherwise having no idea.

boz scaggs' "georgia," from a couple years earlier, is a dead ringer for elton and is a much better song.

Good catch!

Silk Degrees is like an Elton John record that John wasn't capable of making anymore

"Shooting Star"

http://youtu.be/ueXBHTSkZY4

oh wait – this is incorrectly named on YouTube! Stand by.

I can't find a standalone clip, so go to 33:11 here: http://youtu.be/VcxJqI7I-xA

Was just wondering if we're going to have trouble finding the more obscuro Elton tracks on YT.

"Shooting Star": this starts out promisingly, w/ the fretless bass and an intriguing verse melody, but mercy, when that garrulous saxophone shows up it's curtains for me. Feels like Elton going for a Hejira sound and missing

yes, i mean no, to that saxophone, which reminds me more of billy joel or gerry rafferty than joni.

but this is the first song on a single man that sounds anything like classic elton to me. it's a gorgeous melody. it's sung well. i love the bit, on the line "you might have seen me at the early show," where the electric piano follows the vocal melody.

"Madness!!!"

http://youtu.be/Zx4HYH9Y35Y?t=1m43s

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/Z3ghExwTEq8/hqdefault.jpg

A bit of "Grey Seal" in the intro.

just completely ridiculous, but I kinda love it. The disco strings showing up on the chorus are a fun touch; generic guitar solo not so much.

This isn't bad, no, but he gets hoarse and it goes on a bit.

So far A Single Man plays like run of the mill early seventies Elton except without a fantastic single or two to put it over.

yes, feels like "the formula" is still in place, just minus the hits. Things get weirder on the next one, if I recall (haven't heard Victim of Love in like 20 yrs).

"Reverie"

http://youtu.be/VcxJqI7I-xA?t=41m48s

"Song For Guy"

http://youtu.be/CFSlSCjzV_U

http://thelastsongiheard.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/song-for-guy-single.jpg

Sounds like EJ got "Little Jeannie" out of this one--he's almost singing the "Jeannie" melody at the end

so this is the big cross-Atlantic mystery: huge hit in the UK, utterly nowhere in the States: it's Elton's equivalent of "Mull of Kintyre." Some speculation that the reign of the horrific "Music Box Dancer" in the US in '78 sewed up the market for piano instrumentals

one of Princess Di's favorite songs too

I love it. I was only about 5 when it came out. My Dad claimed it was about a gorilla which had died at London Zoo. Several decades passed before I discovered this was untrue.

I can't hear the charm. The hook is weak and the synth touches are garish.

"Flinstone Boy (b-side of "Ego")

http://youtu.be/ttu9Psimn0E

http://bernardmitchell.co.uk/images/stories/blog_images/elton_john_ron_rollitt.jpg

answer to question: "Why didn't Elton John write his own lyrics?"

"reverie" would make a good film cue for a certain moment in a quirky drama.

"song for guy" sounds like the isolated instrumental track for a meh vocal song.

"flinstone boy" sounds like he was spending more time with heroin than with cocaine.

"madness" restores my faith that it was in fact cocaine not heroin. there were times (both before this and after this) when elton could actually have sung that chorus.

(and, yeah, it's very "grey seal.")

"I Cry at Night" (B-side of "Part Time Love")

http://vimeo.com/14295324

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-4358747-1362755111-1674.jpeg

I don't know what he's attempting. The harmonies and voice affects are like CSN meets Freddie Mercury.

"Lovesick"

http://youtu.be/IRaOZAPD_g0

Note: Bob Dylan did not cover this in 1997.

Melodically it's a cousin to "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and its brisk pace and let's-get-down-to-business air work. Maybe the bongos help?

otoh the lyrics are garbage and the singing has no character.

The sort of track that aspires to be aerobics workout music but doesn't quite make the cut. Still, even at his most indifferent, EJ can still toss out a few hooks like pennies into a tip jar.

alfred, we doing the Thom Bell singles from '79 before Victim of Love?

The song to which we owe the thread title?

that's the one!