(Credits: Alamy)
Fri 23 January 2026 20:00, UK
Elton John wasn’t exactly on for subtlety in any of his music.
Although there are a handful of songs that could touch people’s hearts in a far more intimate way than the average songwriter, it’s hard to think that the same person who came up with that song was the one who could wear some of the most outrageous outfits ever conceived by man when they went out onstage. But for all of the window dressing that John put on most of his songs, the reason why it worked so well was that he had so many people to follow in the footsteps of.
You have to remember that, before John was one of the most celebrated musicians in the pop sphere, he had already been considered one of the biggest pop fans ever. His infatuation with the charts bordered on obsession when he was a kid, and even to this day, he is still out there listening to the best music that he could find out in the wild, whether it’s him collaborating with Dua Lipa and Gorillaz or stepping out onstage to sing along with Chappell Roan.
But the biggest names in his record collection before he got famous were never about the glamour. Sure, Elvis Presley helped kick down the door for rock and roll stars to look pretty onstage, but when John clicked with Bernie Taupin, their common language wasn’t always the biggest stars of the day. They were born to be songwriters, and they could talk for hours about everyone from Carole King to James Taylor to Cat Stevens whenever they discussed the best artists of all time.
Then again, being a great songwriter wasn’t something that one genre started back in the day. Long before the likes of Taylor and Stevens, the British invasion had already given the world the greatest melodies ever composed, and Brian Wilson was there to hurl the ball right back across the pond when making Pet Sounds. It wasn’t hard for everyone to make a good song if they had heart behind it, but John felt that nothing could ever compare with what the likes of Motown were doing.
Because by comparison, Hitsville was one of the most impressive factories of pop music anyone had ever seen. Whether it was listening to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, or Martha Vandella, every single one of the tunes coming out of Detroit had the potential to be a pop classic, but for John, nothing could possibly go wrong when listening to Smokey Robinson lay down a classic tune.
His voice was absolutely perfect for all those Miracles songs, and John felt that ‘The Tracks of My Tears’ belonged in an entirely different league of tunes, saying, “Smokey Robinson first came into my life when I was a teenager. ‘Tracks of My Tears’ might be the greatest pop song ever written.” And while John’s catalogue has a few contenders for that title, ‘Tracks of My Tears’ is far from a bad choice when looking at the raw songs about heartache.
If there’s one thing that the charts love more than anything, it’s a brokenhearted song, and listening to Robinson and the Miracles cry their way through ‘Tracks of My Tears’ is still one of the best emotional moments of the 1960s. Robinson’s voice might not have had the same power behind it as someone like Stevie Wonder or anything, but when you’re talking about a song like this, having that rasp is exactly the right approach when working on every single tune.
So while John might have an impressive back catalogue of hits to draw from, the only reason his songs sound the way they do is because of what Robinson did first. He helped introduce him to the kinds of harmonies that make people’s hearts dance, and after the likes of rock and roll, bringing this kind of song to the table was everything that John could have asked for.
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