Elton John has more famous songs than just about any other man on the planet, but somehow his very first hit, “Your Song,” has proved to be his most enduring composition. The song exploded onto radio in 1970 and really hasn’t left. “I wrote it when I was 17, hence the extraordinary virginal sentiments,” Bernie Taupin said. “It’s a gem. It’s like a good dog, always there . . . I’ve heard it sung a million times.”
He’s exaggerating only slightly. Elton has performed “Your Song” at nearly every one of his concerts over the past 43 years. It’s often the final encore, though he opens many of his solo acoustic shows with it. Setlist.FM says he’s played it 1,861 times, but the real number is surely well over 2,000. Assuming it’s only 2,000 times, that means he’s spent five and a half days of his life singing “Your Song.”
Here’s an incredible video montage of Elton performing the song from 1970 through the late 1990s. It’s great fun to watch his hair begin to thin, get covered up by hats, go gray, and then magically come back fuller and browner than ever. The costumes become more and more elaborate, until they disappear completely in the Nineties. His voice also deepens, particular after major throat problems in 1986, but he never half-asses the performance.
The song was written especially for Warwick. David’s lyrics are about a woman’s daily thoughts of her man, who is away in Vietnam. Bacharach arranged and produced the original recording in April of 1966, but was unhappy with the result. “I thought I blew it,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1998. “The tempo seemed too fast. I never wanted the record to come out. So what happens? They put out the record and it was a huge hit. I was wrong.” The song was released over Bacharach’s objections in October, 1967 and rose to number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 8 on the Billboard R & B charts.
A few months after Warwick’s single came out, Aretha Franklin and The Sweet Inspirations were singing “I Say a Little Prayer” for fun during a break in recording sessions for Aretha Now. Producer Jerry Wexler liked what he heard, and decided to record the song. With Franklin on piano and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section behind her, it was recorded in one take. Franklin’s version has more of a gospel and rhythm & blues feel, with a fluid call-and-response interplay between the lead and backup singers.
Released in July of 1968, the single was less of a crossover hit than Warwick’s version — it peaked at number 10 on the Hot 100 chart — but rose all the way to number 3 on the R & B chart. Overshadowed at first, Franklin’s recording has grown in stature over the years. Even Bacharach likes it better than the one he made with Warwick. As he told Mitch Albom earlier this year, “Aretha just made a far better record.”
You can listen above, as Warwick performs “I Say a Little Prayer” in an unidentified television broadcast and Franklin sings it with the Sweethearts of Soul on the August 31, 1970 Cliff Richard Show. Tell us: Which version do you think is better?
She is 14 years old, and apparently French. Not much else is known about this precocious young guitarist who goes by the name “Tina S” on her YouTube channel.
Tina became an Internet sensation in late May, when she posted an astonishing cover version of “Eruption,” from Van Halen’s debut album. Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang was so impressed he tweeted, “I need to meet this girl!!!” Writing as “@Tina_Guitare,” the young musician replied, “I need to meet you too! Haha :))” Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres also went on Twitter and said, “This girl is incredible. If you know where she is, I want her on my show immediately.” There was no reply to that one — at least not on Twitter.
Now Tina is back with a new video, made by her teacher Renaud Louis-Servais, in which she rips through a cover of “Vivaldi Tribute,” Patrick Rondat’s speed metal adaptation of the climactic “Presto” (very fast) movement of the Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi’s “Summer” concerto from The Four Seasons. It’s an amazing performance for a 14-year-old (although you should also see her playing classical guitar when she was nine). After watching it above you can look below for a little perspective on the music, as famed violinist Itzhak Perlman plays the same movement with a group of young musicians in a 2003 episode of the PBS show Live From Lincoln Center:
The Beach Boys have a justified place among pop music’s pantheon of all-time greats, and Brian Wilson is one of the few songwriters of the past half-century who can be mentioned in the same breath as Lennon and McCartney and Burt Bacharach.
However…
Like most pop acts of the era (the Beatles being the notable exception) the Beach Boys were also a product of their time in that their early albums contained “filler” tracks. You see, until albums like Revolver began to focus listeners’ attention more on the long-play album as a potentially more significant pop music canvas, it was all about the 45″ single. The little records with the big holes were the measure of an artist’s success; albums were mostly an afterthought–a hit song, maybe two, served up along with a batch of sub-par, often rush-recorded tunes to take a little more cash from the more dedicated fans.
This is not to mention Capitol Records’ proclivities for packaging (and re-packaging, and re-re-packaging) the work of their roster of artists in the most egregious and artistically-demeaning ways to make an extra buck or three. One Beach Boys bootleg box set acknowledges this in its title, Capitol Punishment. That’s why they call it the record business I guess.
The Beach Boys recorded a staggering five albums within an eighteen-month span in the early-to-mid 60’s. Looking back, the results would have been better had it been four. Nestled between the “Don’t Worry Baby”s and the “Surfer Girl”s were some first class turds. They weren’t all songs per se, which is why the word “tracks” is used in this post’s title.
The excellence of their classic material has been justifiably lauded at length. It’s time someone focused on the lowest low points.
So, to borrow a phrase from Elvis Costello, let’s take a look at the other side of summer:
1) “‘Cassius’ Love Vs. ‘Sonny’ Wilson”
A mock studio battle breaks out between Mike Love and Brian Wilson. Nothing here sounds staged at all–just a little behind-the-curtain snapshot of a Beach Boys session.
This one’s positively painful to hear.
2) “Denny’s Drums”
Yeah, the Beach Boys had a drumming sibling. But there’s a reason Brian tended to employ ace Wrecking Crew drummers for sessions instead. This two-minute solo (thought to be the first recorded by a member of a vocal group) is something you’ll hear bettered by some 12-year-old the next time you walk through the drum section of your neighborhood music store.
3) “Our Favorite Recording Sessions”
Not half as embarrassing as “‘Cassius’ Love Vs. “Sonny” Wilson”, this track seems to depict actual candid studio banter. But that doesn’t mean it was a good idea to put it on an album. The Beatles kept the banter private, and so were able to heighten the mystery as to what the process of recording legendary albums was really like–and Capitolize (sorry) by releasing six CDs worth of the Anthology series to fans starved for anything unfamiliar. Oh, and the ‘Cassius’ Lennon Vs. ‘Sonny’ McCartney stuff was infused into really good songs like “Too Many People” and “How Do You Sleep”.
4) “Louie, Louie”
It was simply ill-advised and supremely unnecessary to cover a song that had been done in such definitive, ragged glory by the Kingsmen, not to mention a hundred other garagier bands than the ‘Boys.
5) “Bull Session with Big Daddy”
Taken in context, this unfocused, rambling semi-interview with Teen Set magazine editor Earl Leaf–with food delivered mid-discussion apparently–is the most wince-inducing of all. The reason is that it closes what was side two of the Beach Boys Today album and follows five of the more sublime ballads in the band’s cannon. Whatever mood Brian’s gorgeous crooning and aching lyrics have induced is pulverized in about 2.5 seconds.
6) “County Fair”
With lines like “the most specialist girl I knew”, an annoying fair barker and a more annoying girlfriend whining about winning her a koala bear “Oooohh! Come on, baby!”, this is the opposite of “Fun, Fun, Fun” and serves to make a county fair sound like a teenage boy’s worst nightmare. Oddly enough, this one’s not a concert encore.
A lyrical portrait of one of London’s most peculiar tourist attractions – a humble pedestrian crossing in St John’s Wood. But this isn’t any ordinary piece of street furniture, a 10 minute photo session back in the summer of 1969 saw to that. A couple of weeks after Neil Armstrong took his giant leap, the Beatles took a few short steps across Abbey Road and the rest is history. Roughly timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first recording session at Abbey Road Studios, this quirky short film explores a tiny part of London that is, in the words of narrator Roger McGough, suffused with a sort of magic.
‘Best Super Short’ – NYC Independent Film Festival… ‘Best Documentary’ – UK Film Festival
Every Moment Has A Song 