Elton John\u2019s long and glittery career had to start somewhere, and Universal music thought it would be good to remind us of that with the release of Classic Album Selection (1970-73) <\/i>box set.\u00a0 This collection pulls together five early studio albums to represent a \u201cclassic\u201d period of modest hit production but prior to his true rock superstardom: Elton John<\/i> (1970), Tumbleweed Connection<\/i> (1970), Madman Across The Water<\/i> (1971), Honky Ch\u00e2teau<\/i> (1972) and Don\u2019t Shoot Me I\u2019m Only The Piano Player<\/i> (1973).\u00a0 Notably, 1969\u2019s Empty Sky <\/i>must not have been considered classic enough, as it was left out of the collection altogether.<\/p>\n
As a whole, the collection shows the upward trajectory of Elton\u2019s career, from the syrupy sweet radio favorite \u201cYour Song\u201d to \u201cDaniel.\u201d\u00a0 However, it stops short of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road<\/i>, where things really took off.\u00a0 Many fans argue that these releases are the best of Elton\u2019s work, but there are serious pitfalls here as well that show up throughout Elton\u2019s career.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
First off, there is the issue of the writing team of Elton and longtime writing partner Bernie Taupin.\u00a0 They were first put together by a record company to which they had each individually contributed submissions to a contest.\u00a0 Neither had enough to go all the way, but potential was there and the suggestion that they work together was made.\u00a0 And history tells the story from there.\u00a0 John and Taupin undoubtedly have proven their worth as songwriters, and some of Elton\u2019s music combined with Taupin\u2019s lyrics is just gold, plain and simple.\u00a0 But listening to these five albums in order, any listener can see that this was not a Lennon\/McCartney or Leiber\/Stoller quality team.\u00a0 The gems of \u201cMona Lisas And Mad Hatters\u201d or \u201cRocket Man\u201d are outweighed by odd topics or trying to place too many lyrics within the melody.\u00a0 And unlike other great songwriting teams, there are few hidden gems within these albums.\u00a0 <\/span>The songs that became hits and rightfully remain in the pop culture mind were really the best the pair had to offer.<\/p>\n Within this box, Elton John<\/i> and Madman Across The Water<\/i> can be considered okay efforts while Honky<\/i> Ch\u00e2teau<\/i> and Don\u2019t Shoot Me I\u2019m Only The Piano Player <\/i>begin to cross the threshold into being \u201cgood\u201d albums.\u00a0 Tumbleweed Connection<\/i> is set apart, as it was supposed to, as a concept album of Americana style music with western themes.\u00a0 Tumbleweed<\/i> is not bad, but it is just different, and clearly shows off Elton\u2019s love for this semi-country style.\u00a0 It would reemerge in later albums as well, such as in “Texan Love Song” from Don\u2019t Shoot Me<\/i>, which sounds like it should have been done by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.<\/p>\n This box also provides some bonus tracks to the albums, but nothing that was not already available from previous CD remasters.\u00a0 However, these do provide a couple of good tunes, with a better version of \u201cMadman Across The Water\u201d from the Tumbleweed Connection<\/i> sessions, and a piano accompanied version of \u201cSkyline Pigeon\u201d from the Don\u2019t Shoot Me I\u2019m Only The Piano Player <\/i>sessions that blows the annoying harpsichord and organ laden Empty Sky<\/i> version out of the water.<\/p>\n All told, this box is available for about $40 on Amazon.com, which makes it far more reasonable than many other boxes would be.\u00a0 While the songwriting is hit and miss, getting five solid albums for that price is a good pickup for a fan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":31048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5678],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-42732","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-elton-john","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42732"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}