Elton John's Blue Moves

By Matthew Restall

By 1976, Elton John was the best-selling recording artist and the highest-grossing touring act in the world. With seven #1 albums in a row and a reputation as a riveting piano-pounding performer, the former Reggie Dwight had gone with dazzling speed from the London suburbs to the pinnacles of rock stardom, his songs never leaving the charts, his sold-out shows packed with adoring fans. Then he released Blue Moves , and it all came crashing down. Was the commercially disappointing and poorly reviewed double album to blame? Can one album shoot down a star? No, argues Matthew Restall; Blue Moves is a four-sided masterpiece, as fantastic as Captain Fantastic , as colorful as Goodbye Yellow Brick Road , a showcase for the three elements--piano-playing troubadour, full orchestra, rock band--with which Elton John and his collaborators redirected the evolution of popular music. Instead, both album and career were derailed by a perfect storm of circumstances: Elton's decisions to stop touring and start his own label; the turbulent shiftings of popular culture in the punk era; the minefield of attitudes toward celebrity and sexuality. The closer we get to Blue Moves , the better we understand the world into which it was born--and vice versa. Might that be true of all albums?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1501355422
• ISBN13: 9781501355424
• Release Date: May 2020
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.7" x 6.5"