The bands Elton John thought had no musical talent
In another life, there’s a good chance that Elton John could have made it as a talent scout rather than a musical icon.
He has some of the most brilliant melodies of the 1970s under his belt, and yet, when looking at the kind of artists that he has championed, there are many times where he has helped prop up artists that were bound to become icons, like his outspoken love of everyone from Guns N’ Roses to Lady Gaga. But when you’ve developed that kind of ear for the greatest artists in the world, there are bound to be a few that are holding back everyone else vying for the spotlight.
It’s not exactly easy out there for anyone to get their foot in the door, and John should have known that better than anyone. He only became a singer because he and Bernie Taupin couldn’t find anyone to help turn their songs into masterpieces, and even when they started putting out their own records, it took a little while for tracks like ‘Your Song’ to gain traction on the radio before they finally reached the mainstream.
Their songs may be better than most, but sometimes having the right songs doesn’t matter if they don’t fit into what the mainstream wants. There were already people like John who jumped on the disco bandwagon when it started taking over the world, but whereas the biggest disco hits were unfairly maligned by some people who had a little trace of homophobia behind them, don’t let that fool you into thinking that songs like ‘Disco Duck’ was some masterpiece.
Every genre has its fair share of outright trash, and even when the vibes started turning back to fun in the late 1990s, it was no different. John had settled into his legendary status by that point by making more singer-songwriter music and occasionally working on tunes for movies like The Lion King, but in between pop rockers like Green Day tearing up the charts, the influx of boy bands did end up eroding over time.
Bands like Backstreet Boys may have given us some massive pop gems, but it’s not like John didn’t see how the sausage was being made. For every great artist that came out, there were bound to be a few more that seemed to be manufactured in a lab to get the highest chart position on Billboard.
And if that trend continued, John felt that the music world was going to be heading into a very dark place, saying, “Nowadays, record companies want the quick buck from the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, S Club 7, Steps. They’ve always been around, I’m not knocking the music perhaps, but it’s like packets of cereal. There are too many of them, too many of them are just mediocre. And I think it damages real people’s chance, real talent, of getting airplay.”
Granted, John has walked back a few of those comments in the past few years. Hearing him make a duet with Britney Spears was enough for some of that iciness to fade a little bit, and while the music industry was only starting to create more chances of manufacturing pop stars, he knew that the best thing he could do was a keep an eye out for the ones that actually seemed to be in it for the long haul.
There may be industry plants that find their way into every single generation, but it’s people like John that help separate the wheat from the chaff a lot of the time. So while Simon Cowell can claim to be the one that spots talent every time he comes on television, the fact that John is able to see the potential in someone like Chappell Roan is why he should still be considered a legend of rock and roll. It’s one thing to keep making great music, but the best that anyone could do was keep listening out for the next big thing.
