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The song Elton John said is one of the best he wrote
Elton John was born in Pinner, Middlesex, England back in 1947 and started his musical career at the age of 15. His debut album “Empty Sky” was released in 1969 and was the start of a very successful career.
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The singer and pianist became one of the best-selling musicians of all time, with an estimated amount of more than 300 million records sold worldwide. He has countless hit songs that are always featured on the lists of the best in history. However, there is one that is not well known but he said is one of the best ones he wrote.
The song Elton John said is one of the best he wrote
Alongside his lyricist Bernie Taupin, Elton John wrote many incredible songs especially in the 70s. Those tracks made albums like “Madman Across The Water” (1971), Honky Châteu (1972) and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (1973) become real classics.
But as he revealed in an interview wtih Rolling Stone, he thinks that “Original Sin” is one of the best songs he ever wrote. The track was featured on the 2001 album “Songs From The West Coast”.
“Hearing Ryan Adams’ album Heartbreaker (2000) was a seminal point for this part of my career. I just fell in love with him and that record. And I had the great fortune of doing ‘Songs From the West Coast’ with producer Pat Leonard. He got my idea and simplified the record, and made me work with other musicians.”
Elton John continued:
“I have to say that one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I’ve not fallen out, but I’ve drifted away from Pat. I feel very ungrateful to Pat that I didn’t make another record with him. We were so close on that record. He shifted me so much in the direction that I wanted to go. ‘Original Sin’ is one of the best songs I’ve ever written,” Elton John said.
The song
Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, the song was also released as a single at the time. It had moderated success reaching number 39 in the United Kingdom and number 18 in the United States Adult Contemporary Music chart. The track was also nominated to the Grammy Awards in the category Best Pop Vocal Performance.
Although the song wasn’t very successful, the album managed to reach good positions on the charts. It was number 2 on the United Kingdom charts and number 15 on the United States Billboard 200.
Besides Elton, in that song Patrick Leonard played the keyboards, Rusty Anderson the guitar and Jay Bellerose the percussion. Paul Buckmaster made the string arrangements and was the conductor.
It had a lot of airplay in MTV at the time. The classic official video featured artists like Mandy Moore and Elizabeth Taylor. Even though Elton thinks is one of the best tracks he wrote, “Original Sin” was performed live only a few times.
According to Setlist FM, the song was part of his show 82 times. 39 times in 2002, 17 times in 2001, 11 times in 2003, 8 times in 2004 and 7 times in 2009. Since then he didn’t included the track on his setlist. It also didn’t appear on the musician’s final concert which happened on July 8, 2023 at the Tele2 Arena in Stockholm, Sweden. The setlist was mainly formed with his biggest hits.
The “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour became the highest-grossing of all time. It started in 2018 and was the first one to sell more than $900,000,000 tickets.
