Elton John in the 2000s

Elton John has had a long and successful career, especially considering the quality of his output throughout the eighties and nineties. He has toured frequently and puts on a good show, usually heavy on his seventies hits.

Between Elton John 1970 and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy 1975, Elton made nine records that were either darn good or great. Then, around 1975-1976, quality dropped off. Rock of the Westies was pretty bad, and Blue Moves could have been a decent single disc, but didn't impress as a double album. I liked it, but even I have had to reexamine my opinion, and it isn't the last great one I once thought it was. But I still love side three.

Between A Single Man 1978 and The Big Picture 1997, Elton made fourteen unsatisfying records. There were almost always one or two keepers, but as albums, it was a very rough period, and it lasted 20 years. A few of them showed potential, and several were just awful.

Then in 2001 came Songs From The West Coast. A stellar return to form, and sounding similar to his seventies greats, it contained a whole bunch of great songs in I Want Love, This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore, Original Sin, Dark Diamond, Birds, Love Her Like Me, and Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes. You could listen to the whole thing.

Peachtree Road 2004 came very close to matching Songs From The West Coast, with Weight of the World, Answer In The Sky, All That I'm Allowed, and Turn The Lights Out When You Leave.

The sequel to Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, The Captain and the Kid 2006 kept the quality high, and remarkably almost matched the original in it's ability to write Bernie Taupin's and Elton John's musical biography.

2010 saw the release of The Union with Leon Russell. The two record set, unfortunately produced by T-Bone Burnett, was light on great songs, and had a thick, overly layered, sound that didn't help. Like so many other two-record affairs, it would have been a really fine single disc.

The Diving Board 2013 saw T-Bone Burnett return to the producer's chair, but instead of the big production and millions of players on The Union, most of the record is recorded by piano, bass and drums trio, with occasional additional keyboards. A Town Called Jubilee, Mexican Vacation, The Ballad of Blind Tom, and Can't Stay Alone Tonight were all good, and so was most of the rest.

Finally, in 2016, Elton gave us Wonderful Crazy Night. Strong songs include In The Name of You, Tambourine, Blue Wonderful, Looking Up, and the title track. T-Bone Burnett stays out of the way for a record featuring the touring band and a bunch of good songs. Again, you can listen to the whole thing without needing to fast forward. Pretty amazing after making records for something like fifty years.

I'll skip the Pnau remix album Good Morning to the Night 2012 (it's remixes, and it sold well), the duets record The Lockdown Sessions 2021 (has anyone made a great duets record?) and Regimental Sgt. Zippo 2021 (recorded in 1967 before even Empty Sky, and never released, for good reason).

Given the dearth of good records for some twenty years, Elton John has made a miraculous recovery in this century. If you liked his early work and wrote him off somewhere in the eighties, you should give him another shot. The last twenty years have been darn good for Elton John, and his fans. 

Bette Midler

She's not the greatest singer ever, but she's a darn good one. She isn't the greatest actress ever, but she's a darn good one. She's not the greatest comedienne either, but she's, again, a darn good one. I'll leave her acting and comedic performances to one with more knowledge of those things. She's not the easiest singer to appreciate, but let's give it a try.

She started so strong that it almost set the stage for mid-career problems. Her first two, The Devine Miss M 1972 and Bette Midler 1973 set up her entire career. Everything was on - her love of female harmonies expressed through the Andrews Sisters and the Ronettes, her heart-on-the-sleeve delivery of a big ballad, and a touch of rock and roll. These were not only her first records, but they were also her best.

The three that followed that fine pair (Songs for the New Depression 1976, Broken Blossom 1977, and Thighs and Whispers 1979) were, for lack of a better word, disappointing. They don't figure prominently on her hits compilations. But her soundtrack to The Rose 1979 held her solid versions of When A Man Loves A Woman and Stay With Me, both of which, along with the title track, would feature in her live performances and compilations. Two uneven live records failed to capture her energetic live shows. Even her awful No Frills 1983, which suffered from everything wrong with the eighties, at least held her solid versions of the Stones' Beast of Burden and Marshall Crenshaw's Favorite Waste of Time, a couple of her better rockers.

Between 1988 and 1993 she did three more soundtracks for movies in which she starred, and of course Beaches 1988 includes her biggest hit Wind Beneath My Wings. Some People's Lives 1990 continued her big ballad period, and is one of her better records. Arif Mardin did an excellent job with a sympathetic production that let Midler shine.

As for big hit records that make a lot of money, her ballads The Wind Beneath My Wings, The Rose, and From A Distance, made her a household name, and she milked that big ballad thing for a while on her album releases. But that didn't really help her work between 1995 and 2000. Bette of Roses 1995 at least had To Deserve You, Bathhouse Betty 1998 has a nice Song of Bernadette, and I Sold My Heart To The Junkman and One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, both classics. Bette 2000 included a decent cover of Kirsty MacColl's In These Shoes and an OK Just My Imagination. 

I forgot to mention Barry Manilow earlier. He was responsible for much/most of Bette's first two records. He was her pianist in her early days, and his work with Midler is his finest contribution to recorded music. Both Bette Midler Sings The Rosemary Clooney Songbook 2003 and Bette Midler Sings The Peggy Lee Songbook 2005 benefit from Manilow's production and arrangement work. Both are solid tributes, and Midler sounds good fronting a big band. 

Cool Yule 2006 is a Christmas record. As those things go, it's fine. 

But then in 2014 Bette released It's The Girls!.  A remarkable record that hearkens back to her earliest work in a super good way. It's all girl groups, but not just from the sixties. There''s Teach Me Tonight (from 1956) and Waterfalls (from 1995) and plenty of sixties in between. It is just about as perfect a record as we could expect from Bette Midler in 2014.

There's a bunch of compilations out there, and surprisingly, they don't all cover the same ground. For a good overview and all the essentials, Experience The Divine: Greatest Hits 1993 is the one, and the single disc Jackpot! The Best of Bette 2008 comes close, but omits a few choice moments. The more recent Memories of You 2010 (standards) and A Gift of Love 2015 (ballads) are more narrowly focused and not really hits collections. 

The first two and It's The Girls! are her best records, and Experience The Divine captures pretty much all the career highlights, including her wonderful One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) that she serenaded Johnny Carson with on his last show.