John’s trajectory from seeming overnight success in 1970 to dangerous near-overexposure happened at a dizzying pace, though he’d put in the work before that he was classically trained at London’s Royal Academy of Music and played in blues bar bands since he was a teen. And Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is the mind-melting double-disc epic that could stand in for an encyclopedia entry on “music of the 1970s.” They’re the kind of albums that other artists would eat a feathered boa to pull off once, let alone back to back to back. Madman Across the Water levies a scorched-earth rebuke of critics. Honky Château is the album equivalent of the most perfectly paired French red wine and mellow weed Tumbleweed Connection is solid Americana on par with anything you’d hear from a Yankee in the 20th century. Elton John is as bold and excellent a first proper debut for a new artist as has maybe ever been released.
Half a century ago, he released a total of seven LPs (including one double album!) in just shy of four years, all co-written with lyricist Bernie Taupin and often composed and recorded in a matter of hours or, at most, days. The 76-year-old songwriter hasn’t just set a curve for success against which other artists’ best songs can be judged. The biggest obstacle to creating a ranked list of every Elton John song ever is Elton John himself.
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