1. You might want to start with Your Song, or you might not. Your Song is as much Elton John as he is pudding-basin haircuts and insane eyewear; it is the only Elton you learned to play and you sing it in your mother’s voice and Your Song is in your veins. If you do start here, it’s quite normal to slide nicely into Tiny Dancer, which you do not understand. You imagine Tinkerbell, which is an abomination.
2. What the Sam Hill is Honky Cat. Skip. You are ambivalent about Rocket Man, and this life is too short for ambivalence. Skip. Crocodile Rock sounds like it was made for a toddler’s dance party. You have often used it for this purpose. It’s not a casual listening song. Skip.
3. Ah, here we are at Daniel, which is where you start if you don’t fancy starting with Your Song. You sing ‘Daaaaaniel you’re a staaaaaar’ in a pleasant lilt. You imagine Seventies Elton, sky-rocketing to the top of the music business so quickly he’s burning, all glam and glitter and concealed gayness, thinking that catching a flight to Spain is exotic. I mean. The seventies, right?
All birds were afraid in the seventies.
4. Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting gives you a headache. Skip. DO NOT EVER SKIP Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, because you skipped it for years until you realised how brilliant it was, and you have made an oath never to make this mistake again. There’s a line about hunting a horny back toad. You do not really think Elton has ever hunted any kind of amphibian in his spare time, but you give him some dramatic licence.
5. Sometimes you bypass Candle in the Wind, because – sorry – you feel it has been forever candy-flossed by association with Princess Di. When you don’t skip it, imagine teenage Elton wanting to love Marilyn Monroe as a real person, and feel some feelings. Then shut those feelings down. Benny and the Jets is next. Repeat. BENNY AND THE JETS IS NEXT. You have a special dance for this one, and you don’t know whether the dance or the stuttering consonants or the mohair boots make it, but you are as cool as ICE when you sing this song.
6. You prefer the version of Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me with George Michael, as all right-thinking people do. Skip. Then keep on skipping till Someone Saved My Life Tonight. It’s a slow-burner, this one, and you start with low-key piano mime to the octave chords and end with air-drums, butterfly actions and anguished faces. This is living. Do not forget it.
7. Island Girl is meh. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart is peppy. You watched the video for Don’t Go Breaking My Heart once, and all you can remember is their frantic, peppy faces and so much brown flared trouser you could have used Elton’s leg as a sleeping bag. You think for a minute about using Elton’s leg as a sleeping bag, and then feel weird. Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word is only to be left on if you have ice cream to hand and the death of a pet to mourn. (EDIT: this was later cannibalised by Blue, I find. Of course it was.)
8. This point exists only to remind you that we are still only six years after Your Song. SIX YEARS. Damn.
9. Disc Two is patchy. The eighties, a place of both shoulder pads and Thatcherism: highs and lows came with the territory. Stop quickly in countryville with Blue Eyes, then hop onto I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues. You are only allowed to sing this song if you do the line ‘rollllin’ like thunderrrr/ under the coooovers’ with special growly voice and slightly salacious face. One time you will catch a glimpse of this face in the mirror, and realise it’s the same face you use when presented with a really good, sharp cheese. The rest of the songs are optional till you get to Something About the Way You Look Tonight. In an ideal world this song would be played at your funeral, and all the mourners would cast themselves down and pound the flagstones in memory of your radiance. Then be served crackers and a good sharp cheese. You have left instructions to this effect.
10. The best is here, at the end, with the late songs. This is older Elton, weary Elton, ready-to-cut-the-crap-and-say-it-like-it-is Elton. Never forget that the video for I Want Love stars Robert Downey Jr before he was supernova-famous, lip syncing these poignant things all biceps and hollow cheeks, and it is hotter than the sun’s core. This Train Don’t Stop Here Anymore is your favourite, and you love it for his exhaustion and his brutal honesty. You wish for nothing more in life than to sing the heck out of this song on a car journey and time it so the last notes play just as you pull in to your drive. Because this means you can ignore Song for Guy, all weird instrumentals and Elton creepily whispering ‘life’ over and over.
You find out it was written for a dead boy. Feel guilty. Skip.
make a long story short 