If You're Only Going to Buy One Greatest Hits Set From... Elton John

For somebody who’s been around as long as he has (“Your Song,” his first hit, came out in 1970) and has been as popular as he’s been (54 US Top 40 hits between 1970 and 1999), Elton John has been remarkably restrained when it comes to greatest hits sets.  This is especially astonishing given his catalogue is with Universal/Polygram in the United States, which usually never misses an opportunity to reshuffle songs and release them on an unsuspecting public (ever notice how many Abba greatest hits sets there are in your local store?).

However, since Elton’s been around for so long, trying to find one all-encompassing set is a problem.  By my count, only seven greatest hits sets exist from him (that are still in print), and three are period-specific from certain points in his career.  At the same time, a single-disk set probably won’t do him justice.

So, I don’t actually have this, because I have most of his original albums – but here’s what I would get:

 

Greatest Hits 1970-2002

I don’t love the cover – all the artwork around for this guy, and you grab an old photo, have a designer do a Photoshop touchup, and put it on a white background?  It looks better than some of those “album covers” of rerecordings on Amazon that were done by slapping Microsoft Word Art over a picture of a sunset, but not by much.

That said, this is pretty well chosen.  Only two top 10 studio hits are missed (“Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Mama Can’t Buy You Love”), and almost everything’s in chronological order (“I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That” and “Nikita” are reversed).  There’s also a bonus disk with some versions that include the hit versions of “Candle in the Wind” (the 1987 one, not the Princess Diana version) and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” with George Michael.  And at $13.88 on Amazon ($16.49 for the download), it’s priced reasonably.

Other options:

-         Greatest Hits, which came out back in 1974, is still in print, and if you’re like me, you have it on vinyl.  It’s still wall-to-wall solid.  You might have Greatest Hits Volume II on vinyl as well, but the CD version is probably different – ownership issues forced MCA to take out “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” and “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” for “Tiny Dancer” and “I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford)” in the early 1990s.  (All of Elton’s songs are now co-owned by him and Universal/Polygram, but they’ve elected to keep the track listing on this and the subsequent Greatest Hits 1976-1986 as they’ve been since 1992.)

-         Greatest Hits 1976-1986 was a substitute for Greatest Hits Volume III when the aforementioned licensing issues came up.   If you’re jonesing to hear the latter, don’t; most of the contents are the same, and you’re not missing anything if you don’t have “Heartache All Over the World,” which was not a big hit and was recorded at one of Elton’s lowest points. 

-         Love Songs actually has quite a few songs not on other greatest hits sets, but my philosophy is “Avoid any compilation called Love Songs by any artist.”

-         To Be Continued… is Elton’s box set, circa 1992.  It was out of print for a long time (again, those licensing issues), and then went back into print in the mid-2000s, and may be close to being out of print again (it’s over a hundred dollars on Amazon, although $39.99 for the download).  Great set – almost all Top 20 hits are represented, lots of alternate versions and curios.  Defensively titled (I think Elton thought only has-beens released box sets at that point), and, of course, nothing after 1992, so you won’t find “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” on this one.  If you can find it somewhere cheap, it’s worth the bucks… until Elton releases a more complete box set down the road.

-         Rocket Man:  Number Ones (which is sometimes subtitled Definitive Hits) is a travesty.  Falsely advertised (it’s missing “Something About the Way You Look Tonight” from 1997, which hit #1 with the Princess Diana version of “Candle in the Wind,” but it includes “Tiny Dancer,” which didn’t even make Top 40), missing key songs (“Honky Cat,” “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” “The Bitch Is Back”), ignoring the 1980s altogether, and haphazardly sequenced (chronological from 1970-1994, then back to “Your Song” and four more songs from the early 1970s; it seems as if they forgot CDs run 80 minutes and just threw more material on to fill), this reeks of a cash grab spearheaded by a 26-year-old lower level exec who has never heard a single Elton John studio album from start to finish.  Given Greatest Hits 1970-2002 is less than five bucks more for an additional disk, there’s absolutely, positively no reason to ever buy this one.

By the way, no Elton John album contains “That's What Friends Are For,” the monster 1985 hit with Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight, so no need to look.

Again, you may not need to get 1970-2002 if you’ve got some of the other hits sets, although it’s the only decent one to represent his ‘90s output.  Here’s a handy comparison (this is all of his American chart hits):

		Greatest Hits	Greatest Hits Vol. II	Greatest Hits 1976-1986	To Be Continued	Greatest Hits 1970-2002	Rocket Man: Definitive Hits
Border Song	1970	Yes			Yes
Your Song	1971	Yes			Yes	Yes	Yes
Friends	1971				Yes
Levon	1971		Yes		Yes	Yes
Tiny Dancer	1972		Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes
Rocket Man	1972	Yes			Yes	Yes	Yes
Honky Cat	1972	Yes			Yes	Yes
Crocodile Rock	1972	Yes			Yes	Yes	Yes
Daniel	1973	Yes			Yes	Yes	Yes
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting	1973	Yes			Yes	Yes	Yes
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road	1973	Yes			Yes	Yes	Yes
Bennie and the Jets	1974	Yes			Yes	Yes	Yes
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me	1974	Yes			live version	Yes
The Bitch Is Back	1974		Yes		Yes	Yes
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds	1974		Yes		Yes		Yes
Philadelphia Freedom	1975		Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes
Someone Saved My Life Tonight	1975		Yes		Yes	Yes
Island Girl	1975		Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes
Grow Some Funk of Your Own / I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford)	1976		Yes		live version
Don't Go Breaking My Heart	1976			Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word	1976			Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)	1977
Ego	1978				Yes
Part-Time Love	1978
Mama Can't Buy You Love	1979			Yes	Yes
Victim of Love	1979
Little Jeannie	1980			Yes	Yes	Yes
Sartorial Eloquence (Don't Ya Wanna Play This Game No More)	1980
Nobody Wins	1981
Chloe	1981				Yes
Blue Eyes	1982			Yes	Yes
Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)	1982			Yes	Yes
I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues	1983			Yes	Yes	Yes
I'm Still Standing	1983			Yes	Yes	Yes
Kiss the Bride	1983			Yes
Sad Songs (Say So Much)	1984			Yes	Yes	Yes
Who Wears These Shoes?	1984			Yes
In Neon	1984
Nikita	1985			Yes	Yes	Yes
Wrap Her Up	1985			Yes
Heartache All Over the World	1986
Candle in the Wind (live)	1987				Yes
I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That	1988				remix	Yes
A Word in Spanish	1988
Healing Hands	1989
Sacrifice	1989				Yes	Yes	Yes
Club at the End of the Street	1990
You Gotta Love Someone	1990				Yes
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (w/ George Michael)	1991						Yes
The One	1992					Yes
The Last Song	1992
Simple Life	1993
True Love	1993
Don't Go Breaking My Heart (w/ RuPaul)	1993
Can You Feel the Love Tonight	1994					Yes	Yes
Circle of Life	1994					Yes
Believe	1995					Yes
Made in England	1995
Blessed	1996					Yes
You Can Make History (Young Again)	1996
Something About the Way You Look Tonight/Candle in the Wind 1997	1997					Yes
Recover Your Soul	1998
Written in the Stars	1999					Yes
Someday Out of the Blue	2000