Isn’t it great to see Elton back in the charts? That’s thanks to his collaboration with Brandi Carlile. The Elton Blog returns as well, with a review of the new album, Who Believes in Angels?
- The first cut, which sounds like it’s going to be an instrumental, brings to mind Sixty Years On. That might have been a better idea, in fact, for The Rose of Laura Nyro. There are some striking lines, though, such ”A single stem, it’s 6 a.m” and a reference to Nyro’s rose shedding ”its petal on the page.”
- This is followed by the far more upbeat Little Richard’s Bible. It’s a lot like what another EJ idol, Jerry Lee Lewis, would sing, and is similar to Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On. And Elton sounds like he’s having fun.
- Next is Swing For The Fences, an ”anthem for young gay kids,” to quote Brandi, who sometimes seems to be shouting rather than singing.
- As for the fourth selection, Never Too Late, some listeners have told us it brings to mind another album, 2013’s The Diving Board. The melody isn’t bad but hardly original. And the line, ”It’s never too late to go shoot out the moon” is reminiscent of Elton’s older song, Shoot Down The Moon.
- You Without Me follows, featuring Brandi on lead vocals. While it’s not something we’d sing along to, many people have been touched by this track about parenthood.
- No. six on the album is Who Believes in Angels? It has some of the record’s most vivid lyrics: ”no need to curse the stars or bite before you bark; but when you need someone to walk with in the dark.”
- On the other hand, we can’t help but cringe when listening to The River Man‘s repetitious phrases: ”who knows what the river man knows” and ”Nobody knows what the weather knows.”
- Next up is A Little Light. The subject is timely, meant to offer hope that people can change the world. Elton admitted to Variety that he’d been in a bad mood, ”depressed about Israel, Gaza, all that stuff.”
- Someone To Belong To, the 9th tune, sounds like Sad Songs (Say So Much).
- But the really sad song comes last, When This Old World Is Done With Me. Besides its lugubrious tone, it contains descriptions of being ”scattered among the stars” and returning to the tide. Yet Elton, who told Howard Stern his classical training can be heard here, also believes the song is about Bernie Taupin, ”the relationship we’ve had, the beauty that we’ve had.”
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