Elton John’s new album is out

Sir Elton John has released his 32nd studio album. It was recorded during lockdown and was called The Lockdown Sessions. Boris Barabanov discusses whether it should be considered a solid work from which we can learn something new about the classics.
Elton John called on friends and helpers for the new album

Elton John has called on friends and helpers for a new album

Elton John has called on friends and helpers for a new studio album. When making his Lockdown Sessions album ready for release, Sir Elton John insisted that it was his new studio album, leaving no room for other interpretations. That said, in terms of form, The Lockdown Sessions deserves the term “mixtape,” which is more common among the younger generation. These are not songs invented within one creative concept, not a story with a beginning, a development, a climax and a denouement. All that unites these tracks is the time and the circumstances of the recording. The time is on the cover – the era of the lockdown associated with the coronavirus epidemic. The circumstances are the distant form of work, the opuses comprising parts recorded in different parts of the globe.

It is essentially a duets album, and Sir Elton John has released these kinds of records before. You may recall, for example, the 1993 album Duets, which featured, among other things, the still very popular collaborations with George Michael and RuPaul. And remote recording itself is not something that appeared in 2020.

Melomaniacs now have to decide whether to listen to the whole disc as a single statement, even though, for example, “Nothing Else Matters” (a reworking of a Metallica song with Miley Cyrus vocals), “The Pink Phantom” from Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz and a cover of Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin” featuring Years & Years are already well known. And the mashup track “Cold Heart” featuring Pnau is right now number one in rotation on radio stations around the world.

The key to determining the attitude to “The Lockdown Sessions” may be the fact that in some tracks of the album Elton John is listed as the main performer patronizing the young collaborators, while in others he appears as a guest pianist and vocalist. The spirit of experimentation for Elton John in this project was clearly no less important than the opportunity to once again sell songs from his own catalog. And the role, for example, of the guest pianist, who was sometimes asked by his young colleagues to play a little less “Eltonian”, he was, in his own words, not at all shy.

There is no doubt that “Cold Heart”, “stitched together” from “Rocket Man”, “Sacrifice”, “Kiss the Bride” and “Where’s the Shoorah?”, was not only a witty production decision of the Australian duo Pnau, but also a win-win commercial number, whose success was ensured by singer Dua Lipa. The name of Lil Nas X, the super-popular dark-skinned pop artist whose track “One of Me” Elton John “guests.” The Lockdown Sessions’ members Rina Sawayama, Charlie Puth, Ollie Alexander and S. G. Lewis are musicians who are genuinely interested in Elton John. During the album’s promotional campaign, he referred to each of his young partners as nothing less than “friends.”