Mama Can't Buy You Love: The Official ILM Track-By-Track ELTON JOHN 1978-1988 Listening Thread

I love this one: Elton channeling Lindsey Buckingham, doing a song seemingly written for Juice Newton

Pete Townshend on acoustic.

and, yeah, this is brisk, playful, and energetic: the best of the album tracks to date, and better than every single I've heard.

So far Jump Up! has been the big surprise of this survey---I might pick it up when I see it in the $2 LP bin (it's been there often)

Bernie disagrees:

In a 2010 Sirius radio special, John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin, called Jump Up! "one of our worst albums," adding "it's a terrible, awful, disposable album, but it had 'Empty Garden' on it, so it's worth it for that one song.

"Legal Boys"

http://youtu.be/GAQYoWzTnow

http://bootlegdownloads.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ejg.jpg

contender for "most misleading title in Elton John catalog" award

Another not bad song, and brief. Even the Taupin lyric is coherent.

de-lurking again to say col is completely otm about the lindsey buckingham-ness of "ball and chain." but that brief modulation in the middle -- he goes up a full step for a verse and then, as if thinking better of the idea, suddenly modulates back down -- is bizarre, and it sounds like he never quite figured out how to sing through those changes, especially the downward one.

i like the matter-of-fact rawness of "legal boys" but having a hard time wrapping my head around the music. it seems stitched together.

thoughts on the album so far? I'm also leaning towards buying it (it's cheap).

"I Am Your Robot"

http://youtu.be/3GQ_0A3CgxM

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ERcyYzWYWLw/THMUf1nX0cI/AAAAAAAAFho/WhlbI5ke6lI/s640/slide0056_image149.jpg

The chorus is uninspired lyrically and melodically but the verses are tough; it's clear this song is intended as manifesto.

Yeah, this deserves better, refrain-wise, but it's nicely weird: there are so many brutally elongated phrases that it's like EJ's in open revolt against his own melody. "robot" synth effects seem inspired by Peter Davision-era Doctor Who

potentially good song here -- i don't mind the refrain, at least compositionally -- but the arrangement and production are trying way too hard. it's like he's trying to triangulate old glam elton, new new-wave elton and forever AM radio elton in one weird little anthem. redo it as a synth-and-vocoder track, stick it on neil young's trans (release date: eight months from now), and you might have something.

ok, time for one of the big ones...

"Blue Eyes"

http://youtu.be/4CiyKeSnSxk

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120130180105/lyricwiki/images/4/47/Elton_John_-_Blue_Eyes.jpg

A good friend says this is his favorite Elton song. It's not in my top ten but I like it. Simplicity is its strength (thanks, Gary Osborne). Elton takes advantage of his deepened voice, only going for bathos once (BABEE'S got blue EEEEYYYYES)

some gorgeous chord progs here: an opening B-flat 6th to an F major/F minor shift (on "baby's got"), then these dense augmented E-flats on "deep blue sea." Fine vocal, too: sung under the spell of Dean Martin, EJ later said. Agree the Osbourne lyric works well: "I am home again" resounds

yeah he's in a band and he also praises the chords

only thing i'd lose is the cloying electric piano. Porcaro's brush drumming is a nice touch, tho

weird to see it peaked #12 in the US: thought this was a much bigger hit.

big A/C hit though

Yeah I love this song, definitely one of my favorites of his. Chords are incredible, and it's up there with his best low-register performances. Always thought he was channeling Sinatra on this, probably because of the title!

Leslie Cantor2 months ago

This song is so beautiful! It makes me think of the woman of my dreams, Ashley, who has blue eyes, I love you baby!

beautiful performance of a beautiful piece of music with -- i hate to be that guy but someone has to -- a lyric that makes me see blue, like a blue turtleneck on a blue person with blue blue eyes on a blue man group blu-ray disc.

but then again, as we learned from years of john/taupin classics, elton is almost incapable of writing great music without a wtf lyric.

but bernie wrote wtf lyrics for the ages. this gary osborne effort just makes me blue.

stupid question that never occurred to me before: was the line "blue eyes laughing in the sun" meant as a play on "blue eyes crying in the rain," or is that giving osborne too much credit?

no, i think that's about the limit of Osbourne's wordplay.

the lyric's no masterpiece (but I think it generally works and there are some good lines). Shame EJ couldn't have teamed with Trust-era Elvis Costello for it.

"Empty Garden (Hey, Hey Johnny)"

http://youtu.be/RDRmDlJtIdU

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W99CVQqRl2Y/TtqEusUOj6I/AAAAAAAACGU/ngiZtgCJgdU/s1600/elton-lennon-thanksgiving.jpg

McCartney's "Here Today," released the same year, is the only Lennon tribute that matters: it's a man humbled by life, still sounding half in shock from his loss and grateful for his memories.

I'm sure Elton's anguish was real but this tribute veers from the maudlin to the grotesque: the ridden-to-exhaustion metaphors, the harpsichord fills that sounds like they're from The Exorcist.

"JOSHUA LOVEHALL
1 year ago

I remember The Day John Lennon was killed. It was a cold cloudy day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was Big News But there was one bright spot that day. My Niece was born. She only knows about John because every now and then I tell her how on the day she was born A great Man was assasinated."

The hey-look-we-got-keyboards! arrangement is a bit much, agreed, but the verses are okay.

Paul Simon's "The Late Great Johnny Ace" is tops.

"Princess"

http://youtu.be/Dq4c8HAW-l0

http://31.media.tumblr.com/862d95902a9451e4ee39328af7d4a84a/tumblr_mr2ox0GSdJ1syijoxo1_1280.jpg

can we study this photo

are they exchanging gifts? Did Elton go to Tiffany's?

Elton mistakenly gave the president coke in a box.

not quite as epic as the time the Reagans met Crockett and Tubbs in what looks like Tony Montana's mansion:

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/photographs/large/C30787-7.jpg

did Philip Michael Thomas borrow a drape as a top coat?

anyhow, "Princess": another track in the ongoing theme of intriguing verses/dull choruses. I was okay with it until that awful "you're my..PRIN CESS" tag thing which is just atrocious

the Reagan Library's "celebrity" photo page is amazing. Here's Cher, Robert Rauchenberg, Bruce Jenner and Tom Cruise with the Gipper in '85:

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/photographs/large/C31673-17.jpg

i mean Nancy! Ron was dozing in the lounge during this

love Ronnie's wig.

so uh the song

reagan looking off to the right in elton white house photo looks strikingly like obama looking off to the left in his most iconic pose.

also, don johnson's face is oranger than john boehner's.

nothing to say about this one, eh?

Using his upper register in the chorus was an unexpected surprise; so are the guitar squiggles. Again, I'm impressed by how chunky this mix sounds. Chris Thomas seems to have thought about how he wanted Elton's songs arranged (they would have been lost in the stew on 21 at 33 and The Fox).

agreed with alfred that this is a really good-sounding song, and with col that it's musically a good verse (about as much as you could expect of a mid-period elton john album track, maybe even more) tied to an unfortunate chorus.

but wow those lyrics. i knew gary osborne was bad, but "you are my princess/you make me smile/you make my life seem worthwhile"? was elton sentenced to write songs with osborne as punishment for a drug conviction?

also, that squiggly synth lead at the end makes no sense at all unless it was played on a keytar, in which case i understand.

the concluding synth solo = musical equiv of Osborne

"Where Have All the Good Times Gone"

http://youtu.be/M7OlV1tBIlo

http://www.queenconcerts.com/inc/photos-guest/1982-11-19.jpg

I shuddered when I saw the title; it turns out to be Spinners-like medium tempo rock-soul number.

yes, was bracing myself for a bad Kinks cover

what's odd is that there's another version issued as a B-side of "Ball and Chain"---might as well cover it now:

http://youtu.be/_jb0qNqZ5OA

I like the LP version much more: a throwback in sound to A Single Man. It foreshadows the Motown-Baby Boomer nostalgia mush of The Big Chill and Rod Stewart's godawful "Motown Song" (I guessed it was an Osbourne lyric, but no, it's Bernie), but it swings a lot more than the latter and sounds great: strings are recorded/mixed well. The bridge sounds like Elton had an idea that he forgot to develop.