(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 19 April 2026 10:39, UK
Quite often, an artist will know when they’ve struck gold and have written a track that will almost certainly go down in the pantheon of pop history.
When this happens, the artist might well milk its brilliance for years, rerecording different versions and having it front and centre of every greatest hits album they release until the end of time.
Other times, an artist will hate a song they’ve written so much that they ignore it forever and will never miss an opportunity to denounce it as one of their worst, pretend it never existed or simply move on to making new music that sounds drastically different in an attempt to cover up this artistic bump in the road. It’s a wonder how songs like this ever make the cut for albums, and you have to ask why certain tracks that an artist hates end up being used as filler on a record when they could simply take up the extra space on the side of vinyl with something better.
Then again, what might feel like filler to the artist can often serve a different purpose within the flow of an album. Not every track is meant to be a grand statement, and sometimes those lighter, less essential moments help give breathing room between the heavy hitters, even if the songwriter themselves sees them as disposable.
That tension between intention and reception is something that has followed Elton John throughout his career. While he has an uncanny knack for crafting timeless pop, he has also never been shy about calling out the songs he feels fall short, making ‘Elderberry Wine’ an early example of how even his own perceived missteps could still find a place in his catalogue.
(Credits: Far Out / Heinrich Klaffs)
Elton John has arguably written more gems than he has stinkers in his time, but one song he was never particularly pleased with was ‘Elderberry Wine’; a track that ended up on his 1972 album Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only The Piano Player and was a B-side to ‘Crocodile Rock’. It’s by no means a terrible song, but Sir Elton once said in a 1973 interview with Beat Instrumental that “this is a stock Elton John number. It could have been on any of my albums.”
The pop legend was early on in his working relationship with lyricist Bernie Taupin at the time, who was inspired to tell a story of life in the southern states of America, where the male protagonist is a feckless individual who relies on his wife to serve his every need, requesting that she brings him his favourite ‘Elderberry Wine’.
The song is decidedly tongue-in-cheek in the way it handles the themes of life in the south, with the laid-back demeanour of those residing in the region being depicted in the way they derive pleasure from the simplicity of drinking the titular beverage. The album title was also heavily inspired by the culture in this area as well, with Taupin having supposedly spotted the words adorning a novelty plaque that was for sale in a thrift store he once visited.
While the tone of the track is brilliantly reflective of the themes it supposedly explores, it isn’t the finest example of the work that the songwriting duo would produce when compared to later collaborations or even some of the other cuts that made the record it eventually landed on. That being said, if you wanted to throw a contrarian opinion into the ring, you could make the case that it’s still a better song than ‘Crocodile Rock’ itself, a song with a hook so invasive that it can make the skin crawl after the umpteenth time of hearing it.
‘Elderberry Wine’ isn’t the only song that John has tried to distance himself from, having once decried ‘Philadelphia Freedom’ as a misstep that caused him to “get sick and tired of hearing myself on AM radio” when visiting the US further going on to say that he found it “embarrassing”. If there’s one person who is allowed to be the worst critic of an artist, it’s probably best that they do it all themselves.
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