Elton John

Tag: collaborations

  • Cold Heart and the Art of the Late-Career Collaboration

    In 2021, “Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)” — Elton John with Dua Lipa — went to number one in the UK and became a top-ten hit in the United States. He was 74. The song made him the first solo artist with UK Top 10 singles in six different decades. It looked like a novelty from the outside. It was actually the logical end point of a strategy he had been running for half a century.

    Built from His Own Catalogue

    “Cold Heart” is a mosaic: the Australian production duo PNAU stitched together elements drawn from several existing Elton John recordings — most recognisably “Rocket Man” and “Sacrifice” — into a new dance track, with Dua Lipa sharing vocals. It required an artist willing to let outsiders dismantle his most famous work and reassemble it for rooms he would never play. Very few legacy acts allow that. He had already done it once before, decades earlier: the 1990s club remixes and the general permission he gave younger producers to treat the catalogue as raw material.

    A Habit, Not a Stunt

    YearCollaborationWhy it mattered
    1976“Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” with Kiki DeeHis first UK number one single — a duet, characteristically.
    1985“That’s What Friends Are For” (Dionne Warwick & Friends)A charity single for AIDS research, years before most of the industry would touch the cause.
    1991“Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” live with George MichaelA number one on both sides of the Atlantic, and a passing of mutual respect between generations.
    2010The Union with Leon RussellThe reverse move: lifting up the older artist who had influenced him.
    2021The Lockdown SessionsA full album of remote collaborations, from Lil Nas X to Stevie Nicks — and “Cold Heart.”
    2025Who Believes in Angels? with Brandi CarlileA complete co-billed studio album, with Taupin still writing lyrics.

    Most legacy artists protect the catalogue. He kept lending it out — and it kept coming back bigger.

    Rocket Man Archive — editorial

    There is also the unglamorous infrastructure behind it: his long-running Apple Music radio show and his very public habit of championing new artists by name — a list that has included Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Sam Smith and dozens of less famous names — meant that when he called, younger artists answered. The lesson for any long career is simple and hard to copy: he never stopped being a fan. See the late-period albums in context.

  • John & Taupin: How the Longest Partnership in Pop Actually Works

    Most songwriting partnerships are marriages: two people in a room, arguing a song into existence. The Elton John–Bernie Taupin partnership is a correspondence. Taupin writes a lyric, complete, and hands it over. John takes it to a piano — alone — and either finds the song quickly or discards the page. They have worked this way since 1967, and it may be the single most durable creative arrangement in popular music.

    An Envelope from Lincolnshire

    Both men answered the same 1967 talent advertisement placed by Liberty Records. Neither, individually, was what the label wanted: Reg Dwight could write melodies but not words, and Bernie Taupin, a teenager from rural Lincolnshire, wrote words but no music. Ray Williams at Liberty passed Taupin’s lyrics to Dwight almost as an afterthought. They wrote by post before they had spent meaningful time together, then shared a bunk-bedded room at John’s mother’s flat in Northwood Hills while grinding out songs for other artists as staff writers for Dick James Music.

    The Method, Such as It Is

    1. Taupin writes first. Complete lyrics, no melody in mind, delivered in batches.
    2. John composes alone, and fast. By many consistent accounts across decades — including both men’s own descriptions — if a melody does not arrive within roughly half an hour, the lyric is set aside.
    3. No veto wars. Taupin does not dictate the setting; John does not rewrite the words. The division of labour is near-absolute, which both have credited for the absence of serious creative feuds.
    4. Separation is the feature. They have never lived in the same city for most of the partnership. The distance appears to be structural, not incidental.

    The result reads like a paradox: some of the most personal-sounding songs of the twentieth century — “Your Song,” “Daniel,” “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” — were sung by a man describing feelings first drafted by someone else. The trick is that Taupin was often writing about John, or about their shared life, with a candour John says he could not have managed about himself.

    The Interruptions That Proved the Rule

    The partnership paused in the late 1970s — Gary Osborne wrote the lyrics for A Single Man, and Tim Rice later supplied words for The Lion King and Aida. The reunion on Too Low for Zero (1983) produced the strongest album in a decade, and the sequel projects — Captain Fantastic (1975) and The Captain & the Kid (2006), both autobiographies of the partnership itself — bookend the story neatly. In 2024, the two received the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song jointly, which is how it should be: the catalogue is unsigned by either of them alone. More in the full biography.