Life isn't everything

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

04/02/79 : A Single Man - Elton John


Our fifth visit with Elton, stretching from '72 to '25 so you can't fault the lad for longevity - thankfully this isn't Victim Of Love, his disco album which was released later in the year and is apparently dreadful.

Yeah, this is much more the classic Elton John sound - but, with the exception of "Part-Time Love" and "Song For Guy" (which my dad also plays very nicely), it doesn't throw up any classic Elton John tracks. It's all perfectly fine and rolls on through without scaring anyone off (although I definitely didn't need the 8:27 of "It Ain't Gonna Be Easy" and "Madness" also outstayed its welcome at 5:55), but I struggle to imagine too many people revisit it often (or at all). It's certainly quite the album cover though.

We're at #10 in the charts this week on his fifteenth week of a 25 week run, with it peaking at #8 in its twelfth week. The top five this week were the Action Replay compilation (which is certainly one of the odder #1 albums of the year), the Don't Walk - Boogie compilation (what on earth was going on this week?), Blondie, Elvis Costello and Ian Dury with the highest new entry being the UFO live album (#7) which I kinda feel I should have made an exception for, but it's too late now!

Wikipedia tells us this is his twelfth album and his first without Bernie Taupin, with Gary Osborne providing the lyrics here. I was surprised to learn that "Song For Guy" was released as a single and got as high as #4 - it obviously just connected to people in some way. Particularly randomly, it also tells us that this was Elton's first album to be released in Russia, but they had to remove "Big Dipper" and "Part-Time Love" due to the unsuitable subject matter. Some interesting names pop up on the album - BJ Cole (he was the go-to guy for a looong time if you wanted some pedal steel), Herbie Flowers (who we met earlier in Sky) and the staff and players of Watford Football Club (obviously providing backing vocals). Critically, it was all met with a bit of a shrug, but commercially it did well enough with #4 in Norway being the highest it got anywhere, but it managed #15 in the US, selling a million copies over there.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for a quid but if you want a signed copy, it's going to set you back £400 - quite how anyone validates they're actually signed is beyond me. There's nothing wrong with this album and I'm glad I caught up with it, but it's not going to be one that lingers in the memory for long.

28/01/79 - Not nearly as bad as it might have been
11/02/79 - Grade-A Stilton

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