I don’t know, I just have this thing for Elton John songs. (Rather, Elton John and Bernie Taupin songs). Someone Saved My Life Tonight shuffled on my iPod while I was running today (after The Velvet Underground, before Joan Jett), and I felt like that butterfly, free to fly, fly away, high away… Granted, I admittedly and genuinely appreciate easy-listening music more than most. But there’s something in the complexity, the pent-up (homo)sexuality, the perfect arrangements of these songs that resonates with me.
I loved that Lars von Trier used Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (and so many other AM Gold runners-up) in Breaking The Waves. I tried to learn it on guitar so I could sing along, like a snotty gay courtesan:
You can’t plant me in your penthouse / I’m going back to my plow.
I felt a rock-n-roll kinship with the Max (of Max and Paddy’s Road To Nowhere) when he sincerely serenaded an ex-girlfriend with I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues.
There are plenty of clunkers in his catalog, but these have a place in my heart and on my iPod.
