95 Songs of Summer, #54 - "The Bitch is Back" (1974)

I've written elsewhere on this blog - probably on more than one occasion - that Elton John was my first "musical hero," and to this day I'd put his 1972-75 output up against just about any other artist's during such a short period of time.

At the beginning of the summer in 1974 I bought "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," a feast for the ears (a double-album with enormous depth) and eyes (great design and lyrics pages, something that for the most part went by the wayside with the demise of vinyl LPs).  And then, lo and behold, Elton released "Caribou," looking, shall we say, quite odd on the cover.  The first hit from that album was "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," featuring Elton in classic ballad mode.  But then, right around the beginning of August, another song began to show up on the airwaves - "The Bitch is Back" - and to these then-young ears, sounded like the hardest rocking thing Elton had ever done.  What those two songs demonstrated was that at his peak, which Elton was at that time, he could do just about anything - soft rock, hard rock, and everything in between.  He probably didn't get the credit he deserved because of the funny outfits, but he certainly won the battle of the charts.  And deservedly so.

From the summer of 1974, Elton John with "The Bitch is Back."