The “terrible” 1979 album Elton John couldn’t ever approve of
Elton John didn’t want to spend his entire musical career being a one-trick pony.
He and Bernie Taupin were making some of the greatest pop music that the world had ever heard, but there was a lot of ground for them to cover that didn’t always have to rely on the glitz and glam that John had commandeered every single time he went out onstage. There was a lot more for them to explore, but John felt that there were more than a few times when he took his songs a touch too far.
But sometimes a glam rock song needs to be more than a little bit campy to become classic. That’s the entire reason why T Rex was able to work so well when playing those bluesy riffs, and even if John only had a piano to hide behind every time he performed, it was important for him to have a bit more theatricality in the mix whenever he took to the stage in those outrageous outfits. So when the rest of the world followed suit, John seemed to be like a fish in water.
He didn’t invent the idea of glam rock by any means, but even if he followed in the footsteps of people like Leon Russell, he was a lot more comfortable making records that catered to the same crowds that David Bowie and Sweet were appealing to. That was a lot more interesting for him, but the line between campy and downright laughable usually came when bands started to hop on the disco bandwagon.
If I’m being completely honest here, though, disco didn’t absolutely suck by any means. It was omnipresent in people’s lives, but the danceable tracks were still fun for the time, and no amount of dumbasses who decide to set a ballpark on fire is going to ever stop Donna Summer’s greatest tunes from hitting just as hard on the dancefloor now as they did back in the late 1970s.
That said, not every rock and roll band is equipped to make disco hits. ‘Miss You’ is already one of the most lacklustre dance songs The Rolling Stones ever made, and even though John seemed to be the most cut out for the genre, Victim of Love is hard to really defend when looking at all of the baggage that surrounds it. John was working without Taupin for the first time, and trying to become his own version of Saturday Night Fever was never going to work.
He could still bring the tunes when he wanted to, but aside from the title track, John felt that there was no real reason for him to have made a record that was this uninspired, saying, “Not everything on Victim of Love was terrible, if the title track had come on at Studio 54, I’d have danced to it, but making an album in bad faith like that is never a good idea.” If you want a good idea of what you’re in for here, though, the best and the worst aspects of the album can all be found on his cover of ‘Johnny B Goode’.
It’s not usual for anyone to want to pay tribute to one of the godfathers of rock and roll, but even though Chuck Berry was used to making party music, there was no real reason for the national anthem of rock and roll to get a disco sheen on it. John was clearly trying for something outside of his comfort zone, but even with his insane hot streak with albums like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, this was the first time everyone had to admit that things weren’t working perfectly.
He wasn’t absolutely finished by any means, and even he admitted that a lot of the records that he made afterwards are even worse, but Victim of Love seems the one record that was the least salvageable. Any of his other records do have some decent gems on them, but when you put so much faith into an idea like this that was never going to work in the first place, you can’t be surprised when things don’t end up working out when the whole thing is finished.
