The 1977 song Elton John never wanted to hear again: “I wish the blood thing would piss off”
The entire journey that Elton John has gone on feels almost impossible to imagine today.
He and Bernie Taupin were practically a match made in heaven when they began writing together, and even if they weren’t cut from the same cloth socially, the kind of partnership that they had was one of the purest relationships in all of popular music. Both of them were interested in making the best songs that they knew how, but John could admit when he felt like some of his songs had overstayed their welcome after a while.
And it’s not that hard to see why. If you’ve heard one of your songs played everywhere from weddings to Holiday Inns the same way that ‘Your Song’ has, you’d probably get tired of it as well, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s a great song. John made sure to go the extra mile on every one of his tunes, but that doesn’t mean that every one of them is exactly going to go down in history as one of the greatest songs of all time.
‘Crocodile Rock’ was already a novelty tune by the time that he got hold of it, and even though the song has endured in its own weird way, John has made no secret that it’s not exactly his favourite song. But to understand the reason why a song like that became famous means doing a deeper dive into what made John such an unstoppable force. Because in the context of glam rock, John was practically the answer to The Beatles in terms of melody.
His songs were even getting high praise from members of the Fab Four, and there were more than a few times where it felt like the hot streak was never going to end for him, but there were also moments that didn’t even seem to make any sense. It’s one thing to have songs at the top of the charts and some tunes even turning up on R&B stations like ‘Bennie and the Jets’, but the idea of a song like ‘Philadelphia Freedom’ becoming a national hit doesn’t really make the most sense.
Since the song was written specifically for Billie Jean King’s tennis team, this would be the equivalent of if any football team’s fight song ended up going to the top of the charts. Most artists who could write a lighthearted song this great would probably have needed to be studied by any other pop songwriter, but John was more than a little bit perturbed over the fact that he was hearing his songs every single time he turned on the radio.
Make no mistake, he was still happy to have made the tunes, but he wasn’t about to say that he was itching to hear them all over again, saying, “In America I’ve got ‘Philadelphia Freedom’ going up the charts again. I wish the bloody thing would piss off. I can see why people get sick and tired of me. In America I get sick and tired of hearing myself on AM radio.” And the fact that the momentum stopped after this record was almost a relief for John once he came up for air.
He was ready to have some time off the musical merry-go-round, and while that did mean him chasing after trends when he made records like Victim of Love, “It was fine by him. The thought of having a go at The Beatles as one of the most popular stars in the world didn’t really suit him, and when he took his foot off the gas, that was when he started making some of his more underrated works”.
Being one of the biggest stars in the world is probably a good problem to have as a musician, but John did have his own limits on when he wanted everything to stop. And if he kept going, who knows? Maybe fans would have been talking about him in the same way they talked about how insufferable Phil Collins could get at the turn of the 1990s, so John being tired of himself was as good a sign as any for him to change things up.
