As I said, in my Bob Dylan concert review, I’ve been prioritizing seeing aging legends while I still can, so getting tickets to Elton John was a no-brainer.
Elton is among the top ten bestselling artists of all time, right up there with the Beatles, Elvis, and MJ.
In preparation for seeing him, we watched an Elton John documentary, watched some clips on YouTube, watched part of Rocketman (we weren’t blown away so we stopped), and listened to his complete discography up to 1976 (couldn’t finish it all before the concert).
We parked at an open lot about ten minutes away and nearly froze to death on the walk over — the trade-off for avoiding the vehicle pileup near the venue. We made it inside before dying of frostbite and found our seats.
After a short wait, with no opener, Elton came out wearing his signature loud sunglasses and a colorful suit. He half-joked that people had their tickets for like 700+ days because of COVID.
He started with Benny and the Jets. Initially, he didn’t sound particularly great, and I started worrying that we had made a terribly expensive mistake. Thankfully, he warmed up over the next couple of songs, which sounded better.
Random notes:
I’m never loose enough at concerts. I need to experiment with having a beer or taking MDMA or something. I’d probably enjoy the experience a lot more.
It was cute seeing audience members dress up in loud glasses, platform boots, feather boas, etc. The energy of the crowd can shape the experience. The performer can also influence the crowd somewhat but there’s going to be a selection effect. I think the audience was definitely more lively at the Rolling Stones.
He had like three different drummers and we really liked one of them. He was very lively and had a lot of stage personality. Hearing the history of how long Elton had played with some of the guys and how much he respected them was a particularly nice part of the concert.
Elton has so many hits that he doesn’t have to pad his setlist with too much filler. That said, I would have loved for him to play a Lion King song and maybe my favorite song of his: Daniel.
Elton was quite likable. He talked to the crowd in general and about his history with Detroit and America. I never really care about the “Hi, *insert city here*!” too much, except when the artist mentions some real history they have with the place, which is nice.
He said one guy in the audience has seen him over 200 times in concert and thanked him by name, which must have been nice for the dude. I wonder how Elton found out.
I wasn’t blown away by most of the visuals. Often he would play pre-existing music videos which were kinda mediocre. My favorite of the night was probably Rocketman. The visuals were cool and it made me think of the space program. It reminded Kels of David Bowie, and caused some melancholia thinking about him, aging, and death in general; that stream of thought can be hard to avoid sometimes, especially in this context.
Your Song and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road felt very poignant and were a nice way to finish the night.
Overall: B-/C+ Wasn’t blown away but the quality of his setlist and his charm bumped up the score.
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