Track
- Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
- Candle in the Wind
- Bennie and the Jets
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
- This Song Has No Title
- Grey Seal
- Jamaica Jerk-Off
- I've Seen That Movie Too
- Sweet Painted Lady
- The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909–34)
- Dirty Little Girl
- All the Girls Love Alice
- Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock 'n Roll)
- Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
- Roy Rogers
- Social Disease
- Harmony
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a deceptive album. The music is rock and at times glam rock. The music is catchy and it rocks. There's also a wide assortment of styles which is appropriate I guess for a double album clocking in at seventy minutes.
The polished quality, catchy tunes and clever lyrics make this album seem innocuous and friendly, appealing to mainstream music listeners. Yet, it's neither. Candle in the Wind is so phony and creepy, criticizing exactly what the song is doing, treating Marilyn Monroe as an object for profit.
Sweet Painted Lady, Dirty Little Girl and All the Girls Love Alice are misogynist to the core. With so many other songs, it was unnecessary to include these. Of course, it's not like these are the only songs in rock and roll that celebrate hating women. Those should be called out and rightly condemned, too. But three is pushing the misogyny boundary to an extreme.
Like Paul Simon, Bernie Taupin bores me—a pseudo-intellectual who impresses low-brow pop rock listeners with clever lyrics. Lyrics that seem so profound yet ring hollow when subjected to analysis no more critical than reading them. Again, it's not like there isn't nonsense in rock and roll, but very few are peddling albums based on the clever factor.
There are decent songs within, but they're few and far between. The rest are just boring which could be because the album is too long, but they could also just be plain boring songs. Jamaica Jerk-Off has no business being on the album. Is it now standard to include a token reggae song on every album now that Bob Marley has made the style respectable? (Hell, even Led Zeppelin gets into the act in 1973 with D'Yer Ma'ker. Ugh.)
I liked this album until I started paying attention to the lyrics. Then it just turned me off. If someone else wrote the lyrics and if the album were shorter it would be a big improvement. There's no need to listen to this album, unless you don't think women are worthy of respect. It's got no business being on the 1001 Albums list. Of course, the reason it's there is because of the hits. If only listeners scrutinized more carefully the shit they were fed.
There are some good songs. The stand outs are Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding (except for the Funeral for a Friend bit), Bennie and the Jets, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, I've Seen That Movie Too, Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting and Social Disease. If you like your songs misogynistic then Sweet Painted Lady is OK too.
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
