![]() ![]() The rise of punk rock in Great Britain, which neatly coincided with the period during which John could have been touring Blue Moves.Īnother factor that Restall considers in great detail is the relationship between Blue Moves and John’s other double album of the ’70s, the monster-selling Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.The temporary rupture in the John/Taupin songwriting partnership.Lyricist Bernie Taupin’s unravelling marriage to the woman who had inspired earlier John hits, notably “Tiny Dancer”.John’s self-outing as bisexual in a Rolling Stone magazine interview.John’s decision to not tour behind the album.Restall writes succinctly and accurately about the music on Blue Moves, but as he notes, he focuses more on the factors, beyond the quality of the music, that led to the album’s fate. I still have that original copy and like Restall I’ve listened to Blue Moves and puzzled over it through the years, but not nearly as often as he has. I found my cut-out copy in a department store bargain bin, a year or so down the line from the album’s original release. This origin story rings true with me: I’m one year younger than Restall - and have never been anywhere near a British boarding school - but I also picked up on Blue Moves after its sell-by date. Restall pouted but grudgingly made the deal, and before too long found himself enthralled by Blue Moves. Returning to the shop, the salesman noted that he didn’t have another copy of the hits collection, but that Restall could have a copy of Blue Moves, already one year old, instead. Restall recalls how he bought Elton John’s Greatest Hits II, while visiting an electronics shop with his mom, but the cassette tape immediately was defective. Restall encapsulates this history, noting early on that the compelling question that led him to write the book was “why did a successful album fail?” and that he hoped his exploration of Blue Moves’ afterlife might answer the inverse question, “why did a failed album succeed?”Īs can often be found in the 33 1/3 books, Restall tells the tale of how he came to acquire Blue Moves as a 13-year-old boarding school student in England. From a strictly commercial point of view, John’s career was seemingly forever changed.ĭespite the negativity, John has often spoken highly of Blue Moves, offering this assessment in his 2019 memoir, Me: “It’s a great album, but it’s not exactly the work of two people who are cartwheeling down the street, overflowing with the joys of life.” But after a few weeks of out-of-the-box sales, a wave of negative reviews – including the famed “What is this tripe?” comment made by music critic Robert Christgau‘s wife – hit hard, and sales of Blue Moves stalled, leaving it to be considered a flop that “only” sold three million copies worldwide. As Restall points out, Blue Moves is an emotionally mature and musically eclectic piece of work, moving from the orchestral ballad, “Tonight” to the hard-rocking “One Horse Town” with ease. Hit singles - both album tracks and stand-alone 45s - were rocketing up the charts and concert venues were selling out.īlue Moves, ushered in by the smash hit, “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word”, seemed destined to continue the Elton John juggernaut. Two 1975 albums, the autobiographical Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and the more lightweight-but-harder-rocking Rock of the Westies, had entered the Billboard Album Chart at #1, the first time this had ever happened once, let alone twice. Released in late 1976, Blue Moves coincided with the peak of Elton John’s career. And despite that opening sentence, Restall considers Blue Moves to be a very good album, indeed. While Restall’s books typically cover Colonial Latin American history, here he provides a spirited defense of Elton John’s 1976 double album, Blue Moves, which is commonly considered to be the record that derailed, if not destroyed, John’s career. Blue Moves, the 148th book in the series, was written by Matthew Restall, the Edwin Erie Sparks Professor of History, Anthropology, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Thus begins the latest book in Bloomsbury Academic’s 33 1/3 series, each volume a deep dive into a specific record. ![]()
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