Elton John Sings His Classic Hit ‘Your Song’ Through the Years

In this video we hear and see the evo­lu­tion of Elton John’s voice and his often out­landish stage pres­ence as he sings his break­through hit, “Your Song,” through his long career.

John wrote the love song with lyri­cist  Bernie Taupin. He once said of their long-time col­lab­o­ra­tion, “I’m just a pur­vey­or of Bernie’s feel­ings, Bernie’s thoughts.” “Your Song” was includ­ed on John’s 1970 sec­ond album, Elton John, and was released as the B‑side to the gospel-influ­enced “Take Me to the Pilot.” Disc jock­eys pre­ferred “Your Song,” so it was switched to the A‑side. The song even­tu­al­ly rose to num­ber eight on the Bill­board Hot 100 and num­ber 7 on the UK Sin­gles Chart.

In addi­tion to record sales, the well-craft­ed song also earned John and Taupin the respect of their peers. “I remem­ber hear­ing Elton John’s ‘Your Song,’ ” said John Lennon in his 1975 Rolling Stone inter­view, “heard it in Amer­i­ca, and I remem­ber think­ing, ‘Great, that’s the first new thing that’s hap­pened since we (The Bea­t­les) hap­pened.’ It was a step for­ward.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!