These three Elton John songs showcase a different side of the iconic piano rocker. These songs aren’t what we’d expect from John, but they still fit within the broader scope of his sound. With these three unexpected tracks, he proved himself a diverse artist with a wide range of instrumental power.
“Ticking”
“At St. Patrick’s every Sunday, Father Fletcher heard your sins / ‘Oh, he’s unconcerned with competition, he never cares to win’ / But blood stained a young hand that never held a gun / And his parents never thought of him as their troubled son,” the lyrics to John’s “Ticking” read. This sparse track isn’t typical of John, who often leans toward high production.
It still has the driving piano line we’d expect from a John song, but with fewer bells and whistles. This is John’s powers at their most fundamental. In some ways, it’s a departure from his sound; in others, it’s a deeply potent version.
“Rotten Peaches”
John turned up the country rock dial with “Rotten Peaches”. The English icon tapped into a rootsy American sound for this track, pulling off the pastiche perfectly.
“We’ve moved on six miles from where we were yesterday / And yesterday is but a long, long ways away / So we’ll camp out tonight beneath the bright starlight / And forget rotten peaches and the places we’ve stayed,” the lyrics read. It’s a major departure for John, but it’s not so far outside his wheelhouse that it feels affected.
“Song For Guy”
Though he’s always collaborated on lyrics, John’s songs are known for their powerful poetry. “A Song For Guy” rebukes that formula, relying almost entirely on instrumental. “Life isn’t everything / Isn’t everything,” the simple lyrics read. While that’s a profound statement in and of itself, it pales in comparison to this song’s stunning instrumental.
You’d more readily find this track from an ambient artist than a mainstream rocker. But this song proves John’s genius as an instrumentalist, if anyone ever doubted it. This song was penned in honor of Guy Burchett, a young Rocket Records messenger boy who tragically died in a motorcycle accident. John bottled up quite a lot of emotion into sound. Few lyrics are needed to drive home the tragedy at the center of this song.
Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images
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