The “most perfect” album Elton John ever made
Every artist striving for perfection is often fighting a losing battle in the studio. There might be some great moments of musical brilliance, but the best albums of all time are perfectly flawed in their own way, but that didn’t stop Elton John from being incredibly proud of the track record he had with Bernie Taupin.
Then again, John and Taupin were always joined at the hip from the minute they started working together. Both of them could not have been more different in their personal lives, but somewhere in between the lavish costumes that John could don during every performance and the denim-clad image of Taupin, there was a common knowledge of what made a song sound perfect, whether that was tying together a line perfectly or John breathing life into tracks like ‘Tiny Dancer’.
Not every one of them managed to knock it out of the park, but listening to every one of John’s records, you can hear a slow progression across all of them. Empty Sky wasn’t going to get very far by chasing psychedelic pop, but the run from his self-titled album all the way up to albums like Captain Fantastic saw a handful of classics turn up on nearly every project, especially the smorgasbord that was Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
But for as much flash as that album had, that wasn’t what John intended on being in the beginning. He saw himself as a songwriter who happened to be singing his songs because he couldn’t find anybody else, and when the further back in his catalogue you go, you’re bound to find songs that have a lot more in common with the greatest singer-songwriters of his time like Cat Stevens and James Taylor.
He had a much different instrument to work with half the time, but on an album like Tumbleweed Connection, there’s definitely a rustic feel that you don’t get on most of his later work. Many of the hooks aren’t as immediate as what would turn up on ‘Candle in the Wind’, but tracks like ‘Country Comfort’ and ‘Ballad of A Well Known Gun’ were like musical works of art, often featuring Taupin creating little pictures in your mind as each line played out.
“That’s probably one of our most perfect albums. I don’t think there’s any song on there that didn’t melodically fit.”
Elton John
While the album is far from John’s most well-known work, he knew that he and Taupin hit a watermark, saying, “Lyrically and melodically, that’s probably one of our most perfect albums. I don’t think there’s any song on there that didn’t melodically fit the lyric.” And if the duo needed any more incentive that they were heading in the right direction, they eventually got it from one of their heroes.
Despite John not wanting to come to America when he first played clubs like the Troubadour, he did remember getting thrown for a loop the minute that he and Taupin came face to face with Bob Dylan. Anyone around that time would have been shellshocked to see the musical God in the flesh, but even Dylan had to give Taupin his due by saying that he loved listening to ‘Ballad of A Well Known Gun’.
So even if John wasn’t selling like gangbusters quite yet, this was as good a sign that he was on the rise. And for a business that prefers most of their stars to become the biggest thing in the world within the first three songs they put out, John is living proof that sometimes it’s better for someone’s career to slowly build momentum before eventually taking over the world.
