LogFAQs > #967465306

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road results

The participants sorted by deviation from final results:
FoolFantastic (18)
Johnbobb (32)
MetalmindStats (40)
neonreaper (40)
Raetsel_Lapin (40)
BlueCrystalTear (42)
HBJDubs (46)
Seanchan (48)

General Album Comments

BlueCrystalTear: Anyway, I actually just finished my first relisten of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It's been a while! And... while it's not as consistently awesome as I'd recalled, it's still a really good album. It has the big hits, a couple of really good deep cuts, and a small handful of other songs that blend together. It feels like Elton and Bernie had a backlog and chose to push out a few extra songs, the fact that they were making a new album every eight months notwithstanding >_>

FoolFantastic: Despite the epic length, I find myself returning to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road fairly regularly. Though it appears rather front-loaded, even the lesser-known tracks help maintain a powerful energy. There is a certain grandiosity to several of these numbers that only Elton could wrangle into such a resonant state. Maybe it could handle some cuts (Jamaica Jerk-Off especially stands among the obvious weak points of otherwise classic albums), but it does such a great job weaving in and out of different energy levels that such a thought would never occur to me while casually listening.

Seanchan: Did a first listen yesterday. I knew 3 songs going in and then immediately realized Id heard the title track before. Theres some good stuff here. Lots of variety and Elton is obviously a good vocalist.

My big issue is just that its a long album. I couldnt listen to the whole thing in one go, which really broke up the flow.

My question, is this considered his best album or is it more of a Beatles situation where theres multiple contenders?

BlueCrystalTear: I personally say multiple contenders, but people usually say this one since it's sold the most. He also has Madman Across the Water, Honky Chateau, and Capt. Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy which also have their fans, and a small handful of people would say one of Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player, Tumbleweed Connection, or Too Low for Zero. I pretty much just listed the "definitive" list of his albums that have multiple songs you'd recognize (save for The Lion King but that's a soundtrack). He was releasing an album every 8-12 months in the seventies, so he has no shortage of good stuff.

But yeah, this one was the one to do first, because it has the highest amount of big hits (tracks 2-4 + "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting") and the album cuts are great too.

HBJDubs: Talk about front-loading! The album as a whole kinda suffers a bit from having the first four tracks being the best by a mile, and nothing afterwards really comes close to matching that quality. No bad songs though, I just think the track order could have been arranged a bit better to help the "flow" of the album.

neonreaper: This album starts off like a greatest hits album. Overall this was like ranking two albums - the songs I like and the songs I don't care much about. Ranking the top three songs wasn't easy at all, and then the next set of five was another fun challenge. Elton John is amazing.

BlueCrystalTear: Only issue I have with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is its length. Honestly, if it drops just two songs, it's a LOT less exhaustive to listen to. I could also probably get more than two listens in. But still... the really good stuff is... the really REALLY good stuff. There are eight songs here that I truly enjoyed and the rest were mostly solid too. The track order is also pretty great in that it feels like a concert - the energy swings, as FoolFantastic said, ebb and flow nicely. Overall, a still fantastic album that has some all-time great songs and some... lesser ones that are still fine to listen to.

Seanchan: For an album that's too long, there's still an impressively long list of good to great songs. It's really only the last 2 songs that I'm kind of "eh" on. And yes, I agree that Jamaica Jerk-Off is stupid catchy. With that said, I'm not sure I'll be playing this album in full too much in the future; I could listen to the first 4 songs and feel pretty satisfied.

MetalmindStats: To me, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is probably Elton's most impressive album. Im not exactly breaking any new ground in saying that the way it ebbs and flows, both narratively and instrumentally, its filmic production process, and that certain ineffable yet palpable spark of greatness all involved felt along the way all together contribute a phenomenally cinematic quality. It's a testament to the caliber of creativity and commitment heard here that this record feels like a concept album, however unintentional that is.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road also has the most songs I love among Elton John's discography. Its first six songs in particular make for maybe the most on-point half hour of an album ever, and then the way it steers off-track for a while in a series of sometimes meandering musical stories before summing it all up at the end is sure fitting. There are a couple interruptions in its consistency, I'll grant, but there's more of the singles that helped make me an Elton fan in the first place.