Essential Elton John: Counting down the Rocket Man's 30 best songs

Thrown away on the B-side to “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting,” “Whenever You’re Ready (We’ll Go Steady Again)” may be the hardest rocking number Elton John ever cut. Like “Crocodile Rock” it’s an intentional throwback to pre-Beatles rock and roll, but this revved-up 12-bar blues never sounds like a mere flashback thanks to the big backbeat and Elton John doing his best Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano pumping.

Tense, relentless and set in a minor key, “I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That” is an outlier among Elton John’s adult contemporary hits of the 1980s. Here he sounds agitated, as if he’s truly ready to make a clean break with his lover, a feeling that’s intensified by the digital clatter of the production: everything is all synths, a production design that suited the times but now plays as the best way to convey the irritation at the heart of the song.

Elton John previously demonstrated his love of Philly soul on “Philadelphia Freedom,” a 1975 single crafted as a salute to the wondrous, silky soul released on Philadelphia International. A few years later, he teamed up with producer Thom Bell—one of the key architects at Philadelphia International—to cut “Mama Can’t Buy You Love,” a song that so thoroughly placed him in the Philly milieu that he was supported by the Spinners on backing vocals. It’s a nifty stylistic exercise that uncharacteristically finds John taking a back seat creatively, with no part in the writing of the song.

Years after the song turned into one of Elton John’s staples, Bernie Taupin cleared the air about the origins of “Levon.” “In the press I’ve seen ‘the song was inspired by Levon Helm.’ No it wasn’t. It never was. I just liked the name.” Taupin may (or may not) have taken the name from the Band’s drummer and, if he did, it suits how the song hangs evocative images and scenarios upon the titular character. Elton John’s empathetic melody and, especially Paul Buckmaster’s grandiose string arrangements not only tie these scattered observations together, they lend the song a compelling sense of gravity.

“I Want Love” finds Elton John reconnecting with the troubadour spirit that flowed through his earliest records, marrying that sensibility to the smooth adult contemporary sound that became his specialty in the 1990s. Far from canceling each other out, the empathetic confession is buoyed by the gentler surroundings. The clean polish helps emphasize Elton’s quest for mature, lasting love: he’s looking for a relationship to provide spiritual sustenance and he’s wound up with a record that provides some measure of the very thing he seeks.

Tucked away on the flip side of “Border Song,” the first single pulled from Elton John, “Bad Side Of The Moon” is an early masterwork. Firmly grounded in backwoods funk, the song is dressed with swells of symphonic strings that don’t sweeten the tune but rather accentuate the foreboding gloom at its heart. The live version included on 17-11-70 proves that the song rocks just as hard—and sounds just as gloomy—when all the production accouterments are stripped away.

“Blue Eyes” is a lovelorn ballad that finds Elton John crooning for a melancholy baby whose eyes are blue in color and blue in sadness. The single is drenched in the soft-focused synthesizers of the early 1980s, a production that makes it thoroughly of its era, yet the song itself is an after-hours saloon tune, one that’s sufficiently enamored of its own bittersweet vibe that it could’ve been convincingly covered by Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.

Listen closely to “Country Comfort” and it’s possible to discern that neither Elton John or Bernie Taupin had set foot in America before writing and recording this ode to small-town Southern life. A few details, such as the “hedgehog’s done in clay between the bricks,” feel a bit English and there’s a slight affect to John’s delivery. Still, these quirks wind up endearing, not alienating, conveying the pair’s deep love and debt for American culture.

Maybe because he was handling one of Bernie Taupin’s most inscrutable lyrics—he later admitted that he didn’t care much for meaning here, he simply liked the way the words scanned—but Elton John gives “Take Me To The Pilot” one of his most immediate melodies and arrangements. Borrowing heavily from gospel, John turns Taupin’s cryptic lines into a passionate testifying so convincing that you would swear that the song makes sense.

The rare rock and roll Christmas song that actually rocks, “Step Into Christmas” is designed as an homage to the wall of sound of Phil Spector’s holiday classic A Christmas Gift for You. Drenched in echo and surrounded by jingle bells as well as church chimes, Elton John sounds positively joyful as he delivers a Christmas tune that’s fully aware of its status as a seasonal number: he welcomes the audience to his Christmas song, thanking them for the previous year—as well he should because 1973 is the year he became a superstar. Instead of being tied to the time, “Step Into Christmas” became a holiday perennial precisely because it has such an indelible, infectious sense of fun.

An overblown fanfare that opens Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, “Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” places Elton John in the thick of the prog-rock bloodstream, one that rivals the pomp and circumstance of such arty powerhouses as Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes. The arty angle is emphasized on the instrumental “Funeral For A Friend” section thanks to John’s reliance on ARP synthesizer but the gothic hard rock of the “Love Lies Bleeding” section is tough enough to snag the attention of such metal bands as Dream Theater, who covered the song in 1995.

Sidney Lumet chose to open Dog Day Afternoon, his thoroughly urban crime drama, with “Amoreena,” a romantic tune at the center of Elton John’s country-rock masterwork Tumbleweed Connection. The juxtaposition seems odd on paper but “Amoreena” conveys a sense of hot summer days filled with laziness and longing. The latter emotion is at the core of Bernie Taupin’s lyric which is fixated upon a distant lover. Elton decides not to dwell upon sadness but rather drift in a daydream where memories of stolen afternoons provide enough sustenance to carry through the loneliness.

One of a handful of Elton John songs to be a hit twice, “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” provided the poignant cornerstone on Caribou, an album otherwise dedicated to gaudy, giddy pop. Its stirring chorus crescendos on the original hit version are aided immeasurably by harmonies from Beach Boys Bruce Johnston and Carl Wilson as well as Toni Tennille, voices that help raise the pleading melody into a different astral plane. Nearly two decades later, “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” returned to Earth thanks to a soulful live rendition where Elton happily lets himself be outshined by his duet partner George Michael.

“Crocodile Rock” is where Elton John begins to shake off the earnestness of his earliest records, trading country-rock for the fizzy rush of glam. Like so much glam rock, “Crocodile Rock” dresses up nostalgia in glitter and feather boas: it’s a paean to the days when rock was young, a time filled with Chevys, blue jeans and dance crazes. While there’s a palpable sense of melancholy in its nostalgia—“I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will”—the singalong chorus spins the entire record into the realm of unabashed, infectious silliness.

Creeping with the ominous steady crawl of a dense fog, “Madman Across The Water’’ captures the paranoia of the early 1970s. Bernie Taupin’s cavalcade of foreboding images—boats with broken backs, painted windows, the looming threat of in-laws—captures a free-floating anxiety heightened by a spectacular orchestration from Paul Buckmaster and heavy production by Gus Dudgeon. Alternately sweeping and sawing, the strings ebb and flow, ratcheting up the tension that’s underscored by washes of synths and clusters of guitar, all accentuating an impassioned performance from Elton John. It’s the pinnacle of John’s work as an arty progressive rocker.

The best distillation of Bernie Taupin’s Western obsessions, “The Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun” owes as much to Hollywood as it does to the proto-Americana of the Band. His tale of a gunfighter on the run reads like a dimestore potboiler but it’s delivered with low-down grit and funk, its earthy swing bringing some measure of realism to Taupin’s fantasies. Elton John simply tears into the song, pounding the piano and singing with a gospel fervor reminiscent of “Take Me To The Pilot.”

An unofficial comeback from an artist who never went away, 1983’s Too Low For Zero marked the first time Elton John collaborated with Bernie Taupin on a full album since 1976. They were now survivors and they channeled that energy into “I’m Still Standing,” a defiant rocker with a distinct New Wave bent to its style. Thank producer Chris Thomas for that hint of modernization but “I’m Still Standing” stood the test of time, becoming enough of a signature anthem that the 2019 Elton John biopic Rocketman concludes with a clever re-creation of its campy music video.

A remarkably unaffected ballad sporting an unusually forthright Bernie Taupin lyric, “Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters” paints an empathetic portrait of the teeming streets of New York City. Taupin’s sketch of the city gives equal weight to places and people, using Ben E. King’s old hit “Spanish Harlem” as a prism to view hobos, sons of bankers, sons of lawyers and everybody else who says good morning to the night. Elton John doesn’t dress this tale up with anything flashy: the melody is as direct as the lyrics, lending this song a distinctive emotional pull.

Until “Honky Cat,” there was a certain weightiness to Elton John’s hits, thanks to the sumptuous string arrangements of Paul Buckmaster and the melodramatic production of Gus Dudgeon. None of that is apparent in “Honky Cat.” The jaunty little tune is swiftness on its feet even when John’s clattering honky tonk piano jousts with blares of horns that threaten to pull the country-rock tune into the bayous of New Orleans. These unexpected musical juxtapositions combined with the light tone and funky rhythm amount to the first flowering of Elton John, the playful pop star.

The very title of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” encourages brawling, so it’s no surprise that this single from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a gnarly, pugnacious rocker. Bernie Taupin strives to be rebellious and rowdy, telling tales of debauchery that seem ever so slightly puffed up; occasionally, the wild ride sounds a little bit like a bookish kid imagining what greasers do on a long weekend night. These trace affectations don’t matter because Elton John tears into the song with the ferociousness of a degenerate who has nothing to lose, creating a real anthem for hedonistic good times.

Originally released as a glittery valentine to Marilyn Monroe on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, “Candle In The Wind” provided the foundation for Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s eulogy for Diana, Princess of Wales, one of Elton’s closest friends. John performed this revision twice: once at her September 1997 funeral and once in the studio immediately afterward. Produced by George Martin, the recording turned into an international smash as it functioned as a vehicle for communal catharsis in 1997. Decades after this phenomenon, it’s the original version that leaves a deeper impression; its blend of pathos and glamor captures the essence of a dashed dream.

The centerpiece of Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy, the 1975 album chronicling the early years of Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s partnership, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” documents John breaking free of a doomed relationship with a girlfriend he did not love but was promised to marry. Brought to the brink of suicide, John found a sympathetic ear in his mentor Long John Baldry, who helped convince him to leave the relationship so he could focus on music—a moment preserved on this moving, bittersweet ballad.

Elton John asked Bernie Taupin to write a song for his friend Billie Jean King, a tennis player who had just beaten Bobby Riggs in a heavily-hyped “Battle Of The Sexes” and who led the professional tennis team the Philadelphia Freedoms during the summer of 1974. Taupin took the suggested title of “Philadelphia Freedom,” discarded anything that had to do with tennis, and crafted a free-floating ode to freedom, penning a lyric ambiguous enough that it could’ve been seen as a celebration of American independence on the eve of the U.S. Bicentennial. As a single, what “Philadelphia Freedom” truly salutes is the sumptuous soul of Philadelphia International, with Elton John and producer Gus Dudgeon uncannily conjuring the spirit and sound of the work of Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell.

Despite its title, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” isn’t a blues. The closest it comes to a familiar blues change is during Stevie Wonder’s show-stealing harmonica solo but even that eases into the polished contours of early 1980s adult contemporary, a format that Elton John dominated. This single shows why Elton reigned supreme in the realm of soft rock. It’s executed with a light touch, the melody flowing so smoothly that it takes a moment to realize there’s genuine emotional heft to John’s delivery. “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” may not be a blues but Elton sings it as if it is one which is the reason why the song lingers in the memory.

Sitting at the point where Elton John’s early obsessions of American country-rock and British underground art-rock intersect, “Tiny Dancer” romanticizes the free spirits floating through the rock scene at the dawn of the 1970s. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics for “Tiny Dancer” as he was falling in love with Maxine Feibelman, the seamstress who would later become his wife. With his melody, John lends a sense of earthy sweetness to Taupin’s Valentine but it’s the Paul Buckmaster strings arrangements that make this indelible.

On a continuum with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” “Rocket Man” shares a similar sense of interstellar loneliness. Where Bowie’s astronaut is stranded in space, John’s “Rocket Man” is a workaday drone, unaware of the science fueling his gig and so isolated from his family and his life on Earth he succumbs to a sense of existential dread. It’s a human concern and, fittingly, “Rocket Man” doesn’t quite sound spacey: the slide guitars that launch the pre-chorus push it toward space but this remains rooted in the ersatz country-rock of Honky Chateau, giving the song an exquisite hazy shimmer.

Written with Bernie Taupin’s tongue firmly in cheek, “The Bitch Is Back” plays to the cattiest side of Elton John, coming across almost like a parody of his persona. “I entertain by picking brains,” Elton sings, “Sell my soul by dropping names,” gossipy behavior that’s given an edge by Davey Johnstone’s spitfire guitar riffs that make the single into the hardest bit of glam-rock John ever released. Over the years, the self-parodic elements have eroded away leaving it as an unrepentant anthem for the most ostentatious rocker to ever hit the charts.

An ode to the weird, wonderful freaks of the glam-rock scene of the early 1970s, “Bennie And The Jets” doesn’t sound especially fuzzed up or phased out: there are no traces of T. Rex’s slithering guitar, no crunching chords. There’s flair—mountains of acoustic guitars, studio trickery that gives the illusion it’s a live track—but it’s surprisingly lithe and light, anchored on the off-kilter groove of Elton John’s piano, rhythms funky enough to turn this into a smash R&B hit upon its 1974 release. Later, portions of the song would either be interpolated or sampled by Mary J. Blige, the Beastie Boys, and A Tribe Called Quest, a sign of its lasting R&B legacy.

A crystallization of all of Elton John’s endearing idiosyncrasies, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” benefits from a slight tension between the wistful Bernie Taupin lyric and the majestic Elton melody. Taupin is ready to leave the glamorous life behind, to ditch it all and return to the farm, a saga that seems suited for a ruminative treatment. That’s not what John does. He sets Taupin’s desire to a soaring melody that’s given a cinematic arrangement, one that turns the song into a Hollywood fable: it’s not about achieving a goal, it’s about yearning.

Few artists can say that their first hit wound up as an enduring popular music standard but that’s exactly what happened with Elton John: “Your Song” brought him his first Top 10 hit in either the U.S. or the U.K. but it found its life outside of the confines of the charts, as a host of contemporary easy listening and jazz singers covered the song immediately with Rod Stewart and Elle Goulding’s versions appearing in the following decades. Elton’s original remains the best, his earnest delivery capturing the fumbling sincerity of Taupin’s open-hearted lyrics. That tentative tenderness gives “Your Song” a genuine depth of feeling: it feels as if the emotions are arriving to John, fully formed and demanding to be articulated at once.