Top Ten Songs by Elton John

The Knighted Songwriter Has Been Making Music for Four Decades

Elton John has been one of the most successful recording artists to ever come out of the U.K. He is known for his flamboyant costumes and outrageously big sunglasses, but nothing he wears can outshine his terrific voice and his ability to compose great music. While Elton has numerous successes on the U.S. charts, there are ten of his songs that really stick out for their significance to his career.

"Your Song" was released in 1970 on John's self-titled album. This was one of the first songs John co-wrote with Bernie Taupin, his writing partner, when Taupin was only 17. It reached number 8 on the U.S. charts.

In 1972, space exploration was extremely popular, especially with a man landing on the moon just a few years prior. This prompted the Taupin and John writing team to come up with "Rocketman". Over the years, this song has been used commercially many times. It's been used for an AT&T advertisement. In the hit cartoon series "Family Guy", Stewie performs a spoken version of the song. Also, it is often used as background music for highlight reels featuring pitcher Roger Clemens who is aptly nicknamed "The Rocket."

Also in 1972, John released his "Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player" album. On this album was hit number one hit "Crocodile Rock." Later, the song was remade by the Baha Men for the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's movie.

From that same "Don't Shoot Me" record came "Daniel". The song's original last verse was cut because the song was too long. This was one of many songs that came from a two-day writing marathon effort from John and Taupin in which they wrote an amazing 12 songs.

The 1973 "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album brought Elton multiple hits. The first was "Bennie and the Jets" which rose to number one on the U.S. charts. Elton actually performed this song on "Soul Train" and became one of the few white performers to play on the show at that time.