Elton John: This Is Why I’m Excited For His New Album

As a 50-something-year-old Elton John fan who has worked in media for about three decades, I’ve lived through a lot of Elton John album announcements. I’ll be honest: they aren’t always that exciting to me. As much as I love his music, not all of his albums in the past few decades have made a huge impact on me. But I am excited about last week’s news, when we learned that he and Brandi Carlile are teaming up to do a record together. 

I’ve been an Elton John fan for a long time. In the ‘70s, he was one of the biggest stars in popular music; he was always on whatever radio station my parents played in the car. I remember seeing him on The Muppet Show in 1978 and being amazed. Elton seemed as otherworldly as they did. I was aware that Kermit and Miss Piggy didn’t really exist, but it was hard to believe that this strange singing character named “Elton John” was actually real. 

When I started getting my own cassettes, I was mostly into what I would characterize as “black light poster” music. In other words: heavy metal, progressive rock, and the Beatles. But one of my first tapes was Elton John’s Greatest Hits (the one with him sitting at a piano in a white suit and hat). It’s a flawless, bulletproof collection. 

RELATED: Elton John: His 40 Greatest Songs

I soon became aware that Elton was regarded by many as being past his prime. I’ve always loved discovering the deep tracks by my favorite artists that radio and pop charts somehow missed. Elton had a long string of albums where those gems were really hard to find: 1976’s Blue Moves, 1978’s A Single Man, 1979’s Victim Of Love (which is especially bad), 1980’s 21 at 33, and 1981’s The Fox are all depressingly weak compared to his unbeatable streak in the first few years of the ‘70s. 

1982’s Jump Up! wasn’t much better, but it did have one of his greatest songs ever: “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny).” Elton and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin had only written together sporadically since ‘78, but this song saw their collective genius return. Sadly, it was inspired by John Lennon’s murder. 

In the years since, there have been some truly great Elton songs, but usually on albums that didn’t quite hold up to his legacy. Some examples include 1988’s Reg Strikes Back (“I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That,” “A Word In Spanish”), 1989’s Sleeping With The Past (“Sacrifice”) 1992’s The One (one of his best post-’70s efforts, it had “Simple Life,” “The One,” “Runaway Train” and the incredibly moving “The Last Song”), and 1995’s Made In England (“Believe”). 

Being comfortable and at peace with our lives is something we all strive for, and Elton seems to have found his peace. He deserves that. But peace doesn’t always lead to the best music. It’s easy to understand why Elton is comfortable: through his ups and downs, he has remained one of the most popular concert acts over the past few decades. People show up and pay top dollar to see him, regardless of if they like (or have even heard) his new music. There aren’t huge expectations on his records. 

For me, it’s always thrilling when we get a new Elton classic or at least something with echoes of his greatness. And let’s be realistic: when someone is in the sixth decade of their career, it’s not about “is this better than what they did in their 20s.” A better litmus test is this: “Is this new song great? Does it speak to me today?” I mean, can you imagine being a songwriter and having everything you do compared to “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?” 

What I have realized over the last few decades is that Elton’s best moments come when he is specifically motivated by something or someone. 

One of my favorite Elton songs of this millennium is “Finish Line,” a duet with Stevie Wonder that's buried towards the end of 2021’s The Lockdown Sessions. Both men sing the song about looking back on life and its highs and lows with a gravity that wouldn’t be credible coming from a younger person. It belongs on both of their greatest hits albums. 

Another great moment came from his collaborative album with Leon Russell, one of Elton's heroes. Their 2010 album, The Union, was an extraordinary gesture of generosity from Elton: he was giving Russell a lifeline from obscurity and putting him back in the mainstream. “Hey Ahab,” one of the album’s highlights, could have fit right in on Elton’s 1970s classic, Tumbleweed Connection, which is my favorite of his records. 

My favorite Elton album of the millennium is 2001’s Songs From The West Coast. It wasn’t a collaboration, but the album was so heavily inspired by a then-young artist  – Ryan Adams – that it felt like a collaboration. In the liner notes, Elton wrote, “Special thanks to Ryan Adams, who inspired me to do better.” As he told Rolling Stone, “Hearing Ryan Adams’ album Heartbreaker was a seminal point for this part of my career. I just fell in love with him and that record.” As he told GQ, “I also wanted to go back to recording just piano, bass, drums and guitar, just a four piece, analog, with hardly any overdubs.” While Adams himself wasn’t actually on the album, his influence was so heavy that he may have deserved an executive producer credit. Songs From The West Coast was Elton John’s best album in a quarter century (since 1975’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy), and better than anything he’s done since. 

I had tickets to see Elton and Ryan filming an episode of CMT Crossroads at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom in the spring of 2002. Adams didn’t show up, but his band did. Elton told the audience that he was going to give them a show anyway: he started with a solo set at the piano, singing his own songs. He was then joined by Ryan’s band for a set of the younger artist’s songs. It was clear that he really loved these songs and it was even more obvious how they informed his new album. 

I think that Brandi Carlile may have had a similar effect on Elton, but she’s both an influence and a collaborator, and she has experience working with legends. She’s produced two albums for Tanya Tucker, and she pretty much coaxed Joni Mitchell out of retirement. Additionally, their upcoming duo album, Who Believes In Angels? was produced by Andrew Watt, who is something of a muse to legends, having produced recent albums by the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, and Ozzy Osbourne (and he’s doing Paul McCartney’s next album). Both Carlile and Watt are great at getting the best out of legends, and we’ve already seen that: this team also worked on “Never Too Late” from Elton’s 2024 documentary of the same name. As a long-time Elton fan (and a Brandi fan as well), I think it holds up to their best material. Now, I’m looking forward to more.