The Elton John songs Bernie Taupin is most proud of writing
The partnership between Elton John and Bernie Taupin is a story for the ages. If the duo weren’t introduced to one another, their careers would have been unrecognisable, and the world would be considerably less rich without their joint contribution to the musical landscape.
Before meeting Taupin, Elton was suffering from one major problem that was holding him back, which was his inability to write lyrics. While the music has always come easily to John, finding the words to match the sounds has been an obstacle he’s never been able to overcome.
On the other end of the scale, Taupin has never been a musician, first and foremost, but lyrics are an art form that he’s mastered. While it perhaps seems destiny that their worlds collided, it was Ray Williams from Liberty Records who made the genius decision to pair them together. He’d placed an advert looking for new talent, both men responded individually, and although they failed their respective auditions, Williams could see potential in their pairing.
While they never signed with Liberty Records, they were initially recruited as songwriters by DMC and wrote for artists on their roster, including Lulu. Although John’s career as a recording artist didn’t get off to a flying start, his eponymous 1970 album changed his trajectory and placed him in the limelight.
Together, Taupin and John have made over 30 albums, with countless classic tracks coming from their collaboration. However, it’s the tracks which aren’t as lauded which mean the most to the man who penned the lyrics.
During a conversation with BBC Radio 4 for the programme This Cultural Life, when asked about “which ones he’s most proud of” writing, Taupin replied: “I have my favourites, and my favourites tend to be things that aren’t well known, simply because you don’t hear them very much. One of them is ‘Sacrifice’. I really love that song. I think of that song as the bookend to ‘Your Song’.”
Elaborating on his selection, Taupin added: “It’s the same guy, it’s the character that wrote ‘Your Song’ – the naïve individual, it’s that guy probably 30 years later whose been through the wringer and has seen all those things in ‘Your Song’ from a different point of view because you’ve been through the relationship, you’ve been through the heartache. That guy who wrote ‘Your Song’ hadn’t been there yet.”
Looking back on how ‘Your Song’ is “a song about writing a song”, Taupin revealed that “there’s almost pregnant pauses in there because that’s almost the way I was when I wrote it”.
He continued: “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, and that came across in the lyric”.
Although ‘Your Song’ is much more vastly celebrated than ‘Sacrifice’, which appeared on Elton’s 1989 album Sleeping with the Past, they both tell different chapters to the same story, which is why the songs can’t be separated for Taupin.
Through his songwriting, he revisited a cherished character who finally got what he once dreamed about in ‘Your Song’, but rather than provide a happy ending, Taupin produced the bittersweet ‘Sacrifice’, reflecting the often harsh reality of love.
Bernie Taupin’s favourite Elton John songs:
- ‘Sacrifice’
- ‘Your Song’
