The Elton John album Bernie Taupin thought was their worst
Not every song an artist makes is destined to be a hit. Even if they are willing to put in all the blood, sweat and tears they can muster into the final product, there will always be those few projects that have many more lowlights than others, often considered fan favourites rather than anything spectacular. While Elton John may have had his peaks and valleys as a songwriter, his writing partner had a certain amount of disdain for one of their later works.
Then again, any good Elton John project was bound to succeed if Bernie Taupin was writing the lyrics. First meeting after getting rejected by a record company, John and Taupin were a match made in heaven musically, with John turning every one of Taupin’s lyrics into sublime musical exercises like ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ and ‘Tiny Dancer’.
Although the partnership could have continued for decades, John had expressed a desire to work with other people across his career, leading to him and Taupin taking a break from each other in the late 1970s. Despite having success with albums like A Single Man, John remembered feeling a bit jealous to see his musical soulmate out in the wild with other songwriters, feeling hurt when Taupin’s work with Alice Cooper began to skyrocket.
While Taupin would return to working with John intermittently throughout the years, the magic would always show up on the tape, with songs like ‘I’m Still Standing’ becoming standouts of John’s career once Taupin returned to the fold. After years of working together, the duo’s reunion in the mid-1990s brought what the lyrics writer considered the worst pieces they would ever create.
After working on soundtracks for movies like The Lion King, John had teamed up with Taupin to work on the album Made in England. While things were going smoothly for their first album back together, John remembered Taupin wanting nothing to do with their 1997 album, The Big Picture.
In his memoir, ME, John recalled Taupin tearing the album to ribbons, explaining, “He hated everything about it: the songs, the lyrics, the production, the fact that we recorded it in England and he had to travel from the US. The end result, he opined, was a load of clinical, boring, middle-of-the-road shit.”
While John admitted that parts of the production were dated listening to it, it was only a matter of time before they rekindled the creative flame. Being inspired by the work of songwriters like Ryan Adams, John would end up working with Taupin again on the album Songs from the West Coast.
After a messy divorce, the lyrics seemed to be ripped straight from Taupin’s broken heart, with the song ‘I Want Love’ sounding like a man desperately wondering if he will ever find someone who understands him again. Although Taupin may have had to work out a few elements of his personal life at the time, his years of reflection led him to return to the fold stronger than ever.
