When the Covid Pandemic forced Elton John to cancel his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour like all of us he isolated himself at home with his family .  However, unlike us, he used the time to call up some of his famous musician friends and virtually record a brand new album ….. his 32nd.

What we like best about these one-off collaborations on the 16 tracks he laid down is the fact many were with artists that are outside his typical genres.   Kudos to John (or rather Sir Elton as we should call him) that after making music for over 50 years this iconic singer still not only admires those that have followed him, but he loves working with them too

 

Sir Elton collaborates with hip-hop artists example, Young Thug and Nicki Minaj  on “Always Love You.” They sing and rap over traditional dramatic and slightly operatic lines by John. 

Album opener “Cold Heart” has Dua Lipa singing lines from “Rocket Man” over a club beat and shimmering synths provided by Australian dance trio PNAU, as John himself provides snippets of his own songs like “Sacrifice,” “Kiss the Bride” and “Where’s The Shoorah?”

 

 

“E-Ticket,”  is a duet with Eddie Vedder  of Pearl Jam, and then the “Finish Line,” a duet with Stevie Wonder,(a  septuagenarian like Sir Elton), and could pass as a classic song from either of the two artists’ catalogs.  Similarly a duet with Stevie Nicks on “Stolen Car” feels like it should have existed for decades. The album ends on a touching new version of the late Glen Campbell’s “I’m Not Gonna Miss You,” which was originally released in 2014—the last song Campbell recorded.