(Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi)
Sat 6 September 2025 8:00, UK
Not everyone is focused on their career in the long term when they make that first single. Some artists are going to soak up fame for all its worth before they start worrying about a major career move or image change, but Elton John had plans for what happened when he became a seasoned pro.
Because when looking at all of John’s heroes, none were in it for the short term. He wanted to make sure that if he were remembered, it was for the quality of the songs. Even when all of the costumes faded from view and people only remembered him for his outrageous sunglasses, they would still have songs like ‘Tiny Dancer’ and ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ ringing until the end of time.
But that all came from John being an incredible music historian throughout his career. The correct term might have been ‘music nerd’, but for the piano legend, he would have taken that as a compliment. One of the biggest joys of his life was discovering new music, and even if he had his favourites he always came back to, it wasn’t out of the question for him to listen to a Chappell Roan single with the same kind of love and reverence that he gave to a classic Rolling Stones hit.
By John’s standards, though, Leon Russell belonged in a class by himself. Sure, Russell might have been a sideman for years and never really got off the ground, but looking at his position in his career, John wouldn’t be happy with himself unless he gave one of his idols a proper hit album to his name.
And when playing opposite him on the record The Union, John had a vision of the kind of artist he wanted to be after the hit parade had left him behind, saying, “The record company used to say ‘You need a single’ and I think I fulfilled my brief. But the singles chart isn’t something I’m going to be in anymore, and I realise that, so I have to make records that, as a musician and as a singer, I think, reflect what I want to do at my age.”
After all, Russell had never had a major hit for years by the time The Union came out, yet he was still out there playing purely for the joy of doing it. So for their collaboration album to become one of the biggest records in the charts, it was a case of the fans judging them solely on the quality of their songs rather than wondering if it was going to knock albums by Beyoncé off the charts or anything like that.
Even by John’s own standards for great records, The Union is a tremendous album that wouldn’t have felt out of place in 1975, taking the same cues from some of his daring ventures like Madman Across the Water and Captain Fantastic. A lot of the songs are a little lengthy, and it’s hard to think of a track that would have been cut out to be a single, but it hardly matters when all the songs seem to tell a story with sound half the time.
And given where John would take his music in the next few decades, it seems that he has stuck to his principles in terms of what he wants to hear out of his own music. No one would have suspected that he would one day make an album with Brandi Carlisle, but John didn’t care about what everyone else felt about it. At this point, he was making music only for himself, and as long as it was from the heart, it was bound to find some sort of audience.
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