Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road landed seven songs on my personal playlist, including yesterday’s SOTD (‘Grey Seal’) and the expected hits: ‘Candle in the Wind,’ ‘Bennie and the Jets,’ ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,’ ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’ and ‘Harmony.’
The final track to make the cut was entirely new to me. ‘Sweet Painted Lady’ is a whimsical tune about prostitutes who sleep with sailors on shore leave.
In 1973, Elton John released the double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and capped off one of the most extraordinary runs in popular music history.
Six albums (one of them a double record) recorded and released over the course of four years, featuring some of the most beloved songs ever written. Twenty-seven of the 37 songs on my personal Elton John playlist come from those four years, his first four as a recording artist.
Jumping back into the lesser-known tracks on my personal Elton John playlist, my next song is another from 1973’s Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player.
‘High Flying Bird’ is the final track on the album and an appropriately sweeping ballad to close out the record. John says he was trying to evoke the music of Van Morrison with this song, which has become one of his favorites.
The Concert in Central Park was the first Simon & Garfunkel album I ever heard. Released in 1982, this recording of the late-1991 benefit concert was my gateway to the duo’s music and also to a half dozen of Paul Simon’s solo tunes.
In fact, it wasn’t until I started diving into Simon & Garfunkel’s catalog that I realized tracks such as ‘Late in the Evening,’ ‘Slip Slidin’ Away,’ ‘Kodachrome’ and ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard’ were actually solo tracks written and recorded after their breakup. I mean, they sound so good performed by both men.
Sometimes I kick myself for not keeping detailed records about my Song of the Day posts. If I could go back to Song of the Day #1 and keep a spreadsheet of every artist, song, theme, and so on, I would totally do it.
That would allow me to know, for example, where Barenaked Ladies stands in terms of Random Weekend appearances. Because I have to think they are way up there, if not at the very top.
Meet Me In Montauk 