Elton John's Tip Sheet

Interview, April, 2002

INTERVIEW: So, Mister Crystal Ball, what should we look out for music wise this spring?

ELTON JOHN: My favorite album of the moment is by Miss Kittin & the Hacker, and it's called First Album [Emperor Norton]. It was made in Switzerland, by a French girl and guy. It came out last year in Europe, but it's just been released in America. It's like Kraftwerk meets ... I don't know what, but this girl is brilliant. There's a song called "Frank Sinatra" on it, which is probably the best track of the last year, it's just hilarious. It's very simple, danceable, Euro stuff, but it's fantastic and such a hip album.

I: Did you discover it at a record store?

EJ: No, I read a review of it in England and got it and fell in love with it and bought masses of copies and gave them to friends.

I: We know how much you love checking out the record stores. How often do you do it?

EJ: I go every Tuesday when I'm in America, every Monday when I'm in England and Europe.

I: So when you're on tour in, say, St. Petersburg, Russia, on a Monday, you'd still go?

EJ: I wouldn't go in St. Petersburg because there are no record stores really to go to. But in Japan, or anywhere else in Asia, absolutely, yes. Japan has the greatest obscure albums. I'm big on compilation albums and remixes; I like to hear what's going on on those fronts.

I: Are you noticing that there are a lot of great, new young lyricists coming along?

EJ: Yeah, but not among the bands. Most of the bands are churning up this kind of angst-ridden "stodge," as I call it. One of the few new bands who have made a great album in the last year are the Strokes; but almost all the rest is this turgid stodge. I don't see any irony or a sense of humor in the majority of the new bands.

I: Where do you think all this facelessness is coming from?

EJ: I don't know where it comes from, but enough already. There are certain bands I like that are fun, like Blink-182, Sum 41, Jimmy Eat World, Linkin Park. They're fun, they're young, they're energetic--they're like Green Day. I love those kinds of bands. What I don't like are the kind of gothic, American dirge bands that are just beyond belief. Nirvana was it, and since then there's been hardly anything.

I: What do you think allows British bands to have more dimensions?

EJ: I don't know. I think they're influenced by different kinds of music, and they just seem to have a better sense of melody in general. I mean, there are beautiful melodies on the Coldplay album, Parachutes [Capitol]. And there's a new band called Starsailor, who have an album called Love is Here [Capitol], which is going to do something, I think. It's a really good album. The singer [James Walsh] is very special. And then you get solo artists like Pete Yorn, whose album came out last year--it's called Music for the Morning After [Columbia]. And it's an album you'll be listening to in five years' time. It's beginning to come to life. He played a benefit concert with me in Los Angeles recently, and he was brilliant; everybody absolutely adored him. He was just very simple, a great singer with fabulous lyrics, some personality, some wit onstage, like Rufus Wainwright or Ryan Adams or John Mayer [who Elton John interviews on page 1141. These musicians are saying something; they have a sense of humor. They're all beginning to really happen. It's a slow burn, but now radio is picking up on them all-thank God. But it's taken all this time.

I: So musicians shouldn't give up if it doesn't happen right away?

EJ: No, no, no. People always like quality. Another person I'd like to talk about is Natalie Merchant. I think her most recent album, Motherland [Elektra], is the finest piece of work she's ever made. I play this album nonstop. The title track is so like Jacques Brel it makes me cry; it's just sensational stuff. The album is timeless; it does not sound as if it will ever date or you will ever get fed up with it. And that is such an incredible thing to achieve. Other albums to look out for are Melody A.M. [Wall of Sound] by a band called Royksopp, from Norway. It's hard to pigeonhole, but one could call it chill-out, ambient music. It hasn't been released in America yet, but it obviously will be, because it's really worth hearing.

I: You've been very modest and not talked about your own recent album, Songs From the West Coast [Universal], which many people have said is one of the greatest of your career. You've employed an interesting strategy with your recent videos, which involves using surrogates instead of yourself.

EJ: Right. I knew that the videos for this album were going to be important-videos are a great way of getting your music shown. So the strategy was, for each video we'd get people who are really artistic in their own right, to represent the idea of the song. I didn't have any input whatsoever, except I chose the director Sam Taylor-Wood and suggested Robert Downey Jr. for the first one, "I Want Love." After that, I wanted Sam to be totally free to do what she wanted.

I: And the second video is "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore" with *NSYNC's Justin Timberlake, directed by David LaChapelle. It's a riot. And Timberlake-