ELTON JOHN AND KIKI DEE – “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”
The intro to this is a masterclass: the strings and piano curling around the bass and drums in what amounts to a trailer for the song, teasing its hooks for you. It’s a suitably flirty intro for a duet, so it’s a shame the performers don’t really catch fire. Or the performer – Kiki Dee doesn’t do much wrong (though it’s annoying how her lines sometimes just trail off), it’s just unfortunate that she’s partnered with the fearful pop heffalump that is Elton John.
When the Demis Roussos thread turned into a discussion of “whose voices don’t you like?” I had to bite my tongue, as Elton is close to the top of any list I’d make. It’s not that his badness is in-your-face, it’s more that his steady effortful hollering wears me down. I also blame him for popularising that huffing mid-Atlantic style British pop stars keep falling back on – if you want a moment in “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” which sums up my dislike it’s the way he sings “honey” as ”uh huh-neh”. He’s an ordinary singer who strains for power and connection but never quite makes it, at least on his famous stuff (though I’ve checked out a few recommended album cuts and still found the voice a problem).
As a writer, of course, he had plenty of moments, and disco seemed to particularly suit him, so musically “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” is dandy – all those feinting, jabbing string and guitar parts mirroring what ought to be a playful display of chemistry and affection. Enough of that gets through to make it a good Elton John single, and a record I want to like, but my problem with Elton is just too big a barrier.
5
Good to see Kiki earn a few quid, either way. Her run of 60s flops includes plenty that Dusty would be proud of, let alone Sandie. And almost none of them are on cd, bah.
I have heard (can’t remember the source, but it was more than hearsay) that the song was intended as duet for Elton and Dusty. They had a long -standing friendship–EJ was Dusty’s presenter at her posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, Ms. Springfield was seriously indisposed at the time, and it would take another decade–and the Pet Shop Boys–to coax her back into the limelight. Not to bag on Kiki Dee (who at one time was one of Dusty’s backing vocalists), but one can only wonder what the final product would have been like if things had happened as planned. But so much for “what if’s.”
And while I admit that the song has many aesthetic shortcomings, as others have already mentioned, it’s infectious and fun, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I love to sing along with it. (I’m still looking for the right girl to play Kiki to my Elton!)
As jeff w observes, though, it’s the singers and not the song in this case that gives the song it’s appeal. It’s simple and hardly difficult for even a mediocre singer; but mediocre singers would expose the song for what it is. Elton and Kiki approach it with such vivacity that the words hardly matter.
If I had to chose a favourite song from 1976, it would be this one or one we’ll get to very soon. Of course, considering the fare served up to the public in 1976, I guess that really isn’t saying much.
Chris Clark was another white girl signed to Motown in the 60s, recorded the brilliant single “Loves Gone Bad” – she was American though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Clark_%28singer%29
I can’t recall a time when i didn’t know this track- perhaps thats why i never liked it. Even after i grew out of my teenage snobbery and realised how great much of Elt’s 70s work i still turned my nose up at DGBMH.
Well, i actively listened to again today for the first time in many years and although my dislike for it has thawed slightly i still have..issues. I’ve no problem w/ Elton’s voice normally but here it seems somewhat strained(too high a key perhaps?) and the smugness mentioned above is definitely a hinderance to its appeal. It walks a very fine line between cheerful exuberance and overbearing jolliness, like the bloke at weddings who INSISTS you get up to do the Conga when you’d rather be sat down enjoying your drink and having a chat w/ friends.
The melody is catchy as hell esp. the “wooahh nobody knows it” bit which is the songs main plus point IMO but the Philly-meets-Geoff Love arrangement, though very evocative is also not very good and the whole enterprise is a touch too pleased with itself to deserve more than a 5.I, too would have prefered “Let Em In” at the top which is similarly smug and lightweight but shows more musical imagination than DGBMH
Re#5- other white acts on Motown in the 70s were Albert Finney(oh yes!) and another act who recorded their UK #1 in ’75 although it wont be bothering us for another 6 years..
Re#8- For decades i thought Elton’s “restless” line was actually “oh honey if i get arrested…”
Chris Clark’s double cd has some incredible unreleased tracks. The Soul Sounds album was pretty good, but I Just Wanna Be Loving You is super-intense, dark and very sexual, well worth hearing. Better than anything on Kiki’s rather disappointing Motown album.
And I think we can allow a wander into Billy Fury country, seeing as he’s just about the biggest singles act (along with The Who) to never score a number one. The multitude of Rarities cds come from his mum and brother’s archive. Ex-girlfriend Lisa Voice has the Parlophone stuff. Hopefully she’ll be persuaded to stick it out one day.
I really like Elton John’s voice precisely because of its Vic Reeves ‘club style’ affectation. There is a quality of silliness to everything that the man does that is rather fun and endearing. It’s as though one of the Muppets was making records, rather than a revered rock star. It also makes his attempts to do tortured seriousness, at the very least, tolerable. And Bernie Taupin is generally such a clumsy lyricist that it takes a sympathetically silly man to carry off his songs.
Another thing I like about this as a duet is the unlikeliness of the couple – not in a kind of lazy “he’s gay” way – but there’s something comic about the sight of them together, like a kind of male/female Laurel & Hardy that feels affectionate and complimentary and unlike the showboating egos of many team-up duets. This quality comes across even without seeing them here, I think, in the Wooo Hooos and obvious and jolly rhymes.
Im in obvious accordance with everyone else in saluting Kiki Dee’s undervalued career, but it can’t be said too many times. I’d add ‘Star’ to the great songs already cited.
I think that the thing that I really like about this is that it really is great fun, rather than the irritating simulation of fun that you might expect such a project to be.
Dear God, you lot disappoint me sometimes! Here’s me, offering the most intellectually stimulating carrot in the entire Popular archive by mentioning “Hector’s House” (#5) and sit back to await a marvellously enlightening debate, eclipsing totally the rancidity and disharmony of “Punk Bores”, and WHO picks up the challenge? FUCKING NOBODY!!
I’ll tell you who picked up the challenge…. FUCKING NOBODY!!
And you idiots call yourselves sophisticates!
I f*cking love this song and I’m not ashamed to say so. Well, of course, at the age of eight I would have been deeply, deeply ashamed to say so. But it seems to me still a lovely fusion of pop and disco types of song construction that is surprisingly rare in the 1970s.
I agree with Billy; it’s Elton John’s slightly Muppetish quality that allowed him to get away with some crimes against taste in the 70s and crimes against music in the 1980s and then to ease himself gracefully into the position of National Treasure and Gay-Man-in-Chief that he seems now to occupy. He never really had the kind of severe backlash and deep hostility that many other figures of his status have had – Jagger, Bowie, Stewart – and actually, while I haven’t ever really followed his career with any assiduity, his record from a few years ago, Songs From the West Coast, was, I’d submit, more persuasive a return to form than anything recent by the former three gentlemen.
Not that I’m a big fan. I wouldn’t want this to take a ‘Zombie’ lurch like the last thread…
Oh, re: Wings, I’ve always had a theory that parts of both ‘Let ‘em In’ and ‘Silly Love Songs’ sound like Stereolab, but I’ve never persuaded anybody else about this.
What’s wrong with that, Billy? I’d like to know.
Interesting stuff re: Elton’s silliness, Billy(not so sure about the Wings/Stereolab connection, though!).
The reason why Elton hs never suffered a “backlash or deep hostility”IMO is the fact that unlike all the other Megastar Members of the Rock Establishment he isnt actually a rock musician at all and instead is resolutely and unashamedly pop. I’m certain the Stones, Zepplin, Rod or even Mccartney wouldnt be happy being described as ‘pop’while Bowie has pretty much apologised for his mid 80′s “Serious Moonlight” phase. Its impossible to imagine any of the above mentioned singing the praises of Take That, let alone collaborating w/ Blue! This no doubt explains the reason the likes of Keith Richards have occssionally taken digs at him(but then, of course,Keef seems to hate everything after about 1962-see his recent pathetic comments about Bowie.)
This pop rather than rock sensibility also perhaps explains why unlike practically all his contemporaries he has managed to hold on to at least some of his dignity!…
Interesting that the down/clown rhyme returns to the top only a couple of weeks after The Real Thing… Here being a clown is a more positive quality in establishing a relationship of reciprocated love, one feels.
I tend to feel that Elton’s ability to hold on to his dignity comes from the fact that he never had a lot of it to start with. And whatever else you might accuse him of, he’s certainly not afraid to look ridiculous! Having said which, there’s something I find curiously dislikeable about him, which may derive from sheer over-familiarity: the fact that he never seems to take much of a career break, and even when he’s not releasing a record he always seems to be doing something.
But we can come to the more general business of Eltonhood anon. Meanwhile, I don’t actually like this record and can’t fully explain why, although the familiarity must be part of it. There is always something a bit self-satisfied about him, which might stop them gelling as a couple here.
By the way, why is Ben Folds on the single cover?
Talking of DGBMH being a great karaoke song, has anyone ever attempted Silly Love Songs? It’s almost in Frankie Valli territory! Try it now, it’s quite bizarre, Macca’s voice never comes across as high-pitched as it sounds when you imitate it. Billy, which bits remind you of Stereolab exactly?
I’m not sure I’d lump Macca in with those others – he is surely as pop as Elton! The backlash against him comes from those who hold him up to the standards of a Serious Rock Musician that he inadvertently set with his former bandmates. His 70s and 80s output is nothing if not schizophrenic, but certainly a strong “pure pop” element runs through all of it – most especially “Let ‘Em In.”
Right! I don’t have my copies to hand, sadly – and I’m no musicologist but… There’s something about the keyboards and the metronomic rhythm of ‘Let ‘em In’, and there’s a patch of rather flat harmonies in (I think) the middle-eight of ‘Silly Love Songs’- “How can… my love”.
I think that Linda McCartney’s backing vocals (more tonal than conventionally harmonious) might be a lot of the reason for my finding this similarity.
“Silly Love Songs” I can just about see and that’s mostly due to Linda’s b/vox in the roundelay section (and also the bassline) but the horn section is slightly out of place. “Let ‘Em In” anticipates Tom Ewing favourites Red Box more than anything else.
And I think both songs owe more to Gilbert O’Sullivan than they’re letting on.
And now, if the rest of you will excuse me, I need to do a regrettable but much needed dressing down apropos post number 31:
*clears throat*
First order of business. No Hector’s House on stage. Do you understand me? This Hector’s House that everyone’s quoting? ROOBARB! DIDN’T I SAY ROOBARB? You thought you were covered. You thought, you thought, you thought, you thought eight things last night. YOU’RE ON FUCKING NOTICE WALDO! I gave you a list is what I gave you, is half a list with cues and everything on it.
THE GUYS GET ROOBARB! DON’T MAKE A FUCKING MANIAC OUT OF ME! THE GUYS GET ROOBARB! Do you understand me? This is like hopscotch, rounders, like anything else! THE GUYS GET ROOBARB! We’re not gonna be as strong as our weakest link! THE GUYS GET ROOBARB!
That’s JUST the FUCK ing WAY it IS!!
You start with getting your goddam lists correct so there’s no confusion. When I write something down it gets exactly that. Now what are we gonna do about this Noah and Nelly in SkyLark situation?
Imagine my distress when someone finally played “Lean On Me (Ah-Li-Yo)” by Red Box at Poptimism and it was a month I wasn’t there!!
oh gawd. When’s Rat Trap?
I thought long and hard about whether to include Macca in my post at #35. He’s a tricky one to pin down-perhaps because he came to prominence before the distinction between ‘pop’ and ‘rock’ was set out and unlike Lennon he didnt nail his mast firmly to either camp once those divisions were made. I do think, though, that he has too many artistic pretensions to be happy being described as “merely” a pop artist whereas Elton, whose influences, unlike Mccartney, are almost entirely from outside the ‘rock’ tradition(Broadway, Motown, Tin Pan Alley), would have no problems embracing such a label.
weird fact which has never left me: john lennon no less anointed elton john “the future of rock’n'roll” at some point in the early 70s
(ok i just looked this up in my tattered nme book of rock and it;s not there — so when and where did lennon say this, and when and where did i read it?) (probbly not worth googling the last question) (yet)
i am always quite torn over EJ: i tend to get defensive when ppl mock or diss him, yet i have never really much liked what he does — even his “accessible flamboyance” thing (homesly chubster camps it up) i apporve of more in the abstract than actually enjoy much
re mccartney the pop vs rock argt is tricky not least bcz it’s anachronistic in ref any charting artist prior to pepper — “rock as an artform you could aspire to” vs “toppermost of the poppermost” really weren’t thought about as a versus you should pick and choose between, in macca’s formative years, quite the opposite: indeed, the distinction pretty much crystallises as an issue with lennon’s famous john wenner interview, and his retrospective praise-damn appraisal of elements of his (and mccartney’s) own work (complete with massivbe sibling rivlary issues and distorted bitterness — hullo this is lennon we’re talkin abt after all); conclusion — how macca wd define himself at any given time wd relate very much, in counter-definition, to lennon’s line at that time
(in his practice, mcartney has always implicitly been “me i’m as good at screaming rockers, silly love songs, and grown-up symphonies w.orchestras and everything” — which is a tripartite categorisation on my part which probbly don’t help either way)
That’ll be the same NME Book Of Rock which said that Keith Christmas was the future of music, then.
Would that be the same one that said Linda Hoyle’s “Pieces of Me” was an overlooked classic?
(it’s now worth a fortune)
They’d be right too; it’s bloody brilliant (and it’s been reissued on CD).
Please allow this lurker to chime in here at this point because DGBMH was the first Number One I can remember. It was around this time that my six year old self began to insist on watching TOTP every Thursday. Thankfully my parents allowed me this indulgence – the alternative was Crossroads. It was quite possibly the most important decision they made in my upbringing.
At the time I quite liked EJ and KD’s rather daffy duet, though I don’t think it’s lasted all that well. But as a Watford fan I won’t hear a word said against Elton. I’ve forgiven him for Candle In The Rain just as I’ve forgiven him for inflicting Dave Bassett and Gianluca Vialli on us.