“I just love it”: The modern classic Elton John thought he should have made
Most songwriters in it for the craft aren’t looking to have chart success. Having people sing along to your tunes might be an extra bonus, but it’s usually all about finding that one lost chord that no one has touched or hitting on the perfect lyric to tie every piece of the song together. Although Elton John has had his fair share of perfect marriages between his melodies and Bernie Taupin’s lyrics, he thought that he should have reached the song ‘The Joke’ before Brandi Carlile found it.
Granted, John was always known to be somewhat lavish regarding ballads like ‘The Joke’. No one who has made music for The Lion King is going to be known for subtlety when it came to writing melodies, and whenever he made brilliant slower numbers like ‘Candle in the Wind’, most people knew that it wasn’t just going to be some soft-hearted tune. It was going to be the emotional battering ram to end all others.
At the same time, it’s not like John didn’t know how to tone things down. For a man who spent the first half of his career in the most outrageous suits that one could imagine, he still knew how to approach every song a little bit differently, and when looking at his back catalogue, ‘The Joke’ would fit surprisingly well.
Although Carlile’s traditional brand of rootsy country rock seems a bit far away from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, you have to remember that John and Taupin always had a love of westerns since they were kids. Tracks like ‘Roy Rogers’ or ‘Ballad of a Well-Known Gun’ were practically love letters to the genre, so if John loved the medium so much, it’s not out of left field for him to suddenly try and write something on that level.
But music is about as much of the delivery as it is about the melody, and no one can knock what Carlile did with the tune. Outside of her fantastic vocal performance, everything is kept slightly subdued in the mix, which makes the whole thing feel like watching a grand story coming to an end in an epic movie rather than simply a singer-songwriter tune.
It’s that kind of grandiose sound that made John such a fan of Carlile’s work, telling The Guardian, “I just love it. I’ve played it continuously. It’s just the kind of song I could have written, quite Elton-ish. It’s the song that launched her into the stratosphere after seven albums – it was nominated for four Grammys. She’s a friend, I love her, and people are now giving her the respect she deserves.”
For John, though, being in the spotlight for that long didn’t mean slowing down. It was about trying to find the next best thing, and considering his work with everyone from Dua Lipa to Britney Spears to Gorillaz in recent years, he is more willing to stretch himself now than he was when he was singing ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’.
But who knows? Considering how many genres have become fluid in recent years, it wouldn’t be out of the question for John to record a cover version of this tune if he comes out with another album in the next few years.
