{"id":670122,"date":"2026-07-02T16:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T16:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/670122\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T16:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T16:51:11","slug":"elton-johns-hilariously-bad-1976-imitation-of-motown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/670122\/","title":{"rendered":"Elton John’s hilariously bad 1976 imitation of Motown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Elton<\/p>\n

Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n

Thu 2 July 2026 15:30, UK <\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to decide who, between\u00a0Elton John<\/a>\u00a0and the 1970s, was the bigger deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sure, nothing can match an actual historical period of time, but the Rocketman certainly lived up to his persona during that era of being absolutely everywhere, all of the time. He was the lightning bolt, the thunder, the rain, the sunshine, and the rainbows; essentially, you name it, and he would have a go at doing it. <\/p>\n

Of course, that mantra saw him take on some seismic highs. His double-bill of iconic gigs at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in 1975 seemed to represent the pinnacle of his entire life<\/a>, and as such, it was only natural that he felt the need to keep capitalising on being the king of the world in the immediate aftermath. <\/p>\n

That task seemed easy for someone who was at the peak of their game and wanted everyone to know it. The more difficult thing came with actually proving it in reality, and that meant going back to the drawing board to see where he could strike while the iron was hot next. Glam rock had come and gone, punk was just emerging, and it was hard to see which trend would be his next big streak of luck. <\/p>\n

Then it hit him square across the face. It was golden, it was classic, it was a hit-making machine: it was Motown<\/a>. The fact that John was a boy from inner-city London seemed no big issue to him in terms of breaking into the scene of Detroit and a racially-segregated America. He\u2019d made a career out of pretending to be someone he was not, so why couldn\u2019t he do it again?<\/p>\n

If you hadn\u2019t gathered already, that was how the behemoth of \u2018Don\u2019t Go Breaking My Heart\u2019 came to be unleashed into the world, and with the help of Kiki Dee under his wing, John would like you to think that he never looked back. Unfortunately, that wasn\u2019t quite the case, and his attempt at Motown became more of a laughable imitation than becoming a bona fide part of the canon. <\/p>\n

\"Elton<\/a>Credit: Far Out \/ Youtube Still<\/p>\n

Although he and Bernie Taupin were enough of a songwriting draw<\/a> as they were, for some reason, John wanted his shot at Motown to be so legitimate that he made up an alias to go with it. As such, it wasn\u2019t them that wrote the song, it was \u2018Ann Orson\u2019 and \u2018Carte Blanche\u2019, allegedly trying to mirror the types of names you would have heard at Tamla back in the day. <\/p>\n

The call and response style of the track was a clear hallmark of the genre, which obviously necessitated a female counterpart to John\u2019s dulcet tones. For that, his first choice was Dusty Springfield, who at least did have some skin in the game, but she turned it down due to illness. So Dee got the job, being the next best thing and the first woman from the UK to sign with Tamla Records. <\/p>\n

In a lot of ways, Dee was being somewhat used as a pawn to allow John to enter a space that wasn\u2019t really his. You could argue that this inherently displayed his lack of understanding as to what Motown really was.<\/a> Contrary to popular belief, it wasn\u2019t just a line of production for a guaranteed hit, it actually had to mean something. <\/p>\n

Perhaps it was a move that didn\u2019t show John in the most glowing light. Creating a pastiche of a beloved and historically important genre just because he wanted to cash in on the success and the flavour of the moment possibly wasn\u2019t the best. But then again, it speaks volumes that even 50 years after its release, \u2018Don\u2019t Go Breaking My Heart\u2019 lives to fight another day. <\/p>\n

It may not be the greatest song in the John back catalogue, and it was a quintessential representation of a man who would ultimately do anything for a bit of attention. \u2018Don\u2019t Go Breaking My Heart\u2019 was, indeed, a great injustice to the pillars of Motown itself, but John and Dee didn\u2019t seem to care; they went skipping, arm in arm, all the way to the bank.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Alamy Thu 2 July 2026 15:30, UK It\u2019s hard to decide who, between\u00a0Elton John\u00a0and the 1970s, was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[42201,144586,7465,96,224339,29535,128,215250,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-670122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1970s","tag-144586","tag-elton-john","tag-entertainment","tag-love-songs","tag-motown","tag-music","tag-soul-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}