Goodbye Yellow Brick Road |
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Released: October 5, 1973 Peak: 18 US, 12 UK, 15 CN, 13 AU, 14 DF Sales (in millions): 7.0 US, 0.3 UK, 31.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: pop/classic rock |
Tracks:Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
All songs written by Elton John & Bernie Taupin. * Note: In the U.S. and Canada, “Candle in the Wind” didn’t chart until a live version was released in 1987. Total Running Time: 76:12 |
Rating: 4.495 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings)
Quotable:It “plays like a greatest hits album, overflowing with classic songs.” – Clark Speicher, The ReviewAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:In Elton John’s vast (and uneven) catalog” EW’93 this is “his most effective song cycle.” EW’93 He is “at the peak of his powers…on this sprawling opus of an album.” EW’12 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is “considered the high watermark of Elton’s reign of popularity,” CRS his “commercial and creative apex,” ZS “his magnum opus.” CQ It’s also important to note that this “is perhaps the best example of the magic that was the Elton John-Bernie Taupin songwriting partnership.” PM“John had successfully become the biggest hit-maker since The Beatles” CQ and this “pretty much defines what made Elton John a superstar in the early ‘70s.” AM However, this was also where his “personality began to gather more attention than his music.” AM He “achieved superstardom with this effort and never matched its mastery again.” RV This is “more musically ambitious than anything he attempted previously.” TM It “holds claim to a lot of brilliant, very pop-savvy music.” AZ “Its individual moments are spectacular and the glitzy, crowd-pleasing showmanship.” AM “The grandiose rock is filled with an energy unlike any of his other works, giving us a new side to the piano man.” CQ This is “piano glam rock at its finest, strutting a supersonic sound with prowess and ease.” CQ It “plays like a greatest hits album, overflowing with classic songs” RV which “remain standards more than 30 years later thanks to Bernie Taupin’s sharpest lyrics, John’s propulsive keyboard skills and vocals that leap into falsetto without losing any of their power.” TL The album “demonstrates the ease with which John and Taupin could write not only the hit singles, but the outstanding album tracks.” ZS The Triumphs and Perils of a Double AlbumGoodbye Yellow Brick Road has been called “Elton’s White Album.” ZS Like all double albums, though, there is the danger of being criticized as “overstuffed.” TL Critic Robert Christgau said, “This is one more double album that would make a nifty single.” SS Bill Shaprio echoed that sentiment, noting that there is “some strong material, as well as some pretty forgettable exercises.” SS “Edited down to one disc, this would easily be John’s recorded pinnacle.” SSHowever, others would argue that this is a “stunning song cycle with no filler.” ZS The “flamboyant tour de force” ZS has been celebrated as “a recap of all the styles and sounds that made John a star.” AM In a 1974 review for Circus magazine, Janis Schacht said “Elton John is back and stronger than he’s been on record in many a blue moon. The lush two-record set moves from mood to mood with no apparent effort and a great sense of timing, class and style.” SS A 1973 Billboard review said “John seems able to sing almost any type of material, from rock to country to Jamaican-flavored tunes.” SS In a largely negative review, Rolling Stone’s Stephen Davis acknowledged that the album mixes “straight ultramodern British music hall revue” SS with “plenty of rock synthesized flash and the inspection of the inner feelings of several different versions of Elton John persona.” SS Bernie Taupin and the LyricsOn the album’s lyrics, “Taupin ranges far and wide, but always on what he considers the ‘other’ side of the tracks, romanticizing your moderately seamy crowd.” SS “Bernie takes us into the mind of a tired sort of man who does his living vicariously, via Roy Rogers movies on the telly, …into bed with a prostitute…And so on.” SSThe Writing and RecordingThe Rolling Stones had just recorded Goats Head Soup in Jamaica and encouraged Elton John to give the “relaxing tropical paradise” SF a chance. However, he and his crew “encountered hostile locals and faulty equipment.” SF “Too frightened to leave his hotel room (things were volatile...) and holed up in his hotel room with a batch of Bernie Taupin's lyrics, Elton wrote twenty-one songs in three days.” SSAttempts to record in Jamaica were abandoned and then “an equally unsatisfactory spell in New York” SS followed. Eventually, they relocated to France at the Château d'Hérouville where he’d recorded his previous two albums. “Originally intended as a single album, by the time Elton John had finished recording tracks…it was clear – to him at any rate – that only a double LP would suffice.” SS The Songs“John seamlessly shifts from brash to mournful over the course of its 17 tracks, and the result is not unlike when Dorothy steps into the Technicolor land of Oz for the first time.” PM“Funeral for a Friend/Love Likes Bleeding” The “back-to-back blowouts” CQ have been called both a “prog rock epic” AM and a “Wagnerian-operalike combo.” 500 “It’s as though the prodigiously talented pianist and his longtime lyricist, Bernie Taupin, mean to bust out of the radio-bonbon business.” TM Critic David Prakel praises the song as a “stunner…in which he musters and commands every last musical talent and trick.” SS “Candle in the Wind” In his 1973 review for Rolling Sone, Stephen Davis called it “prettily solemn and unbelievably corny, a necrophiliac erection.” SS In his review for Stereo Review, Noel Coppage asserts that “EJ has given it such a nice melody ans sings it with such emotional credibility that the words actually do begin to mean something.” SS Despite any dismissivemness, the general public reveled in the song’s sentimentality. The original version was a single in the UK and a live version in 1987 was a top-10 hit in the United States. In 1997, the lyrics were revamped as a memorial to Princess Diana and it became the second-biggest-selling song of all time, only behind Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”
“Bennie and the Jets”
“The heavy metal groupie immortalized in ‘Bennie and the Jets’…engages in ritualistic animal sacrifice,” TM not exactly your standard top-40 fare. The album marked “the moment when Taupin’s snarling outsider cynicism collides most spectacularly with John’s questioning melodies and dizzying etude-book piano arpeggios.” TM<./sup>
“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”
“Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”
“Grey Seal”
In his largely negative review, Rolling Stone’s Stephen Davis called this “a fine, fast numbrer, episodic and brilliantly-produced, one of the few large-production numbers here that succeeds all the way through.” SS
“Harmony” Other Songs
There’s also “the ready-made nostalgia of The Ballad of Danny Bailey” AZ which features “Bernie Taupin’s literary pretensions” AM and “novelties [like] Jamiaica Jerk-Off…and everything in between.” AM “All of this could only come from the man in the glittery glasses who knew no limits to where his piano could take him, and thank God for it.” CQ
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First posted 3/21/2008; updated 8/16/2024. |
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