(Credits: Far Out / Shawn Miller / Library of Congress)
Tue 23 December 2025 16:30, UK
As Elton John took to the stage at Glastonbury Festival in 2023, he reeled off a performance that contained hit after hit after hit.
No matter what point in Elton John’s career you are looking at, you won’t ever want for great songs. They follow him around like his own shadow does, as John’s relationship with rhythm, his dynamic vocals, and the captivating nature of his very being, are enough to continue to churn out some of the best rock music that has ever been pressed on wax. Of course, it would be unfair to suggest that John has achieved as much alone, given Bernie Taupin is responsible for so many of these great lyrics.
Taupin has never considered himself a songwriter. He barely considers himself a lyricist. His initial interest was always in storytelling, and it’s his love for a good story that made him put pen to paper in the first place.
“I’ve always been uncomfortable with the term songwriter, because I think I’m only part of a song-writing team,” said Taupin. “Even lyricist is a little too pompous for me. When people ask how I like to be termed, it’s always ‘storyteller’.”
Elton John was paired up with this storyteller as they had both answered adverts in the NME looking for talent. They were both pretty uncool characters, but that only cemented their bond. Elton John had the music, as he was playing piano and uncovering melodies unlike anybody else in the industry at the time. Meanwhile, you had Taupin putting together these stunning lyrics, which John had a lot of fun arranging and assigning to rhythm.
That storytelling element of Taupin’s work certainly does shine through. Perhaps one of the best examples is the track ‘Your Song’, which is widely considered one of John’s greatest. It’s undoubtedly a song (isn’t that a little bit funny), but the way that the declaration of love is delivered is comparable to that which you would hear in a sonnet rather than on the radio. If you read those words in a book, you wouldn’t feel hard done by, and so maybe “storyteller” is the best way to refer to Taupin.
“It’s like the perennial ballad ‘Your Song’, which has got to be one of the most naïve and childish lyrics in the entire repertoire of music, but I think the reason it still stands up is because it was real at the time,” explained Taupin. “That was exactly what I was feeling. I was 17 years old, and it was coming from someone whose outlook on love or experience with love was totally new and naïve.”
As someone committed to the idea of a narrative, ‘Your Song’ isn’t Taupin’s favourite, as he sees it as the story only half complete. What is a tale with deduction and resolution? Taupin believes that comes on the track ‘Sacrifice’, given he feels it’s a song that sees the formerly pining lovestruck singer learn more about his emotions and take a new look at the world as a result. ‘Sacrifice’ is Taupin completing one of the longest stories he had ever written, and so it can’t come as much of a surprise that it’s one of his favourite songs.
“I really love that song. I think of it as the book end to ‘Your Song’,” he concluded. “It’s that guy, probably 30 years later, who’s been through the wringer and sees all of those things you see in ‘Your Song’ from a different point of view.”
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