Elton John
The English singer and pianist who turned the piano into a rock instrument and the pop concert into a spectacle. Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in Pinner in 1947, he took his stage name from two Bluesology bandmates, answered a 1967 songwriting advertisement that paired him with lyricist Bernie Taupin, and built a partnership that has run more than fifty years. Elton John (1970) carried "Your Song" and made him a name in America; Honky Château, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy ran through a stretch of seven consecutive US number-one albums. Thirty-one studio albums later, the catalog holds up as the most commercially durable body of work any solo pop artist has assembled.
Taupin writes the words, John writes the music, and in the early years the songs often arrived within an hour of the lyric sheet. Sales exceed 300 million records worldwide. He composed for The Lion King in 1994, Aida in 2000, and Billy Elliot the Musical in 2005, completing an EGOT along the way — five Grammy Awards, two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy, and a Tony, plus a Laurence Olivier Award and the Kennedy Center Honors. He was knighted in 1998 and named to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2020. The Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour closed in 2023 as the highest-grossing concert tour ever staged to that point, which is a fitting last line for a performer who never once treated a stage as somewhere to stand still.
Articles on Elton John
Elton John – Sacrifice
A Failed Single, a Future Film Director, and the Most Quietly Devastating Music Video of 1989
George Michael & Elton John – Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me (Live)
The Song Elton Said Would End George's Career
Elton John – Crocodile Rock
Inspired By An Australian Band He'd Never Admit Copying
Ed Sheeran & Elton John – Merry Christmas
Nobody Had Ever Just Called It That
T.Rex – Children Of The Revolution (with Elton John & Ringo Starr)
Elton John – Your Song (Top Of The Pops 1971)
Elton John and Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Elton John had conquered America six years running when a song he wrote for Dusty Springfield — and credited to a fake name — finally gave him a UK number one.