Elton John said 1983’s I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues was one of the best songs he got to sing every single night while performing live. He called it “a great song to sing” and said, “It’s just a great song to sing. It’s timeless.”
That judgment matters because it puts the song inside the part of his catalog that still worked onstage after years of touring, even as he was more than happy to leave the stage for the final time after his festival performances in the 2020s. It also sets up a split with Bernie Taupin, who thought the lyrics sounded a little bit dated a few years after the fact.
Elton John on the piano
Elton John said he used his piano to help paint the picture of what Bernie Taupin was getting at every single time he sang. That is the practical difference between a song that survives in a set list and one that only survives on record: the performance has to carry the idea night after night, not just the melody.
He also said the romantic angle on I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues was the perfect kind of lyric for him to sing. By his own account, his soulful voice did a lot of the heavy lifting, which is why the song kept working live even when other material could be retired.
Bernie Taupin and dated lyrics
Bernie Taupin thought the lyrics sounded a little bit dated a few years after the fact, which gives the song a useful friction point. Elton John heard timelessness; Taupin heard a lyric that sat closer to its moment. That split is sharper than a simple disagreement over taste, because it shows how a song can play differently for the writer and the performer.
Elton John did not necessarily relate to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road or Tiny Dancer whenever he sang them, and he said songs including Candle in the Wind, Levon, and Rocketman were encapsulations of the lonely side of life. He had a ball singing and touring the world at the time of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, but the stage test was different from the studio one.
1971, 1983, 2020s
1971 and 1983 frame the comparison cleanly: one year for the hit mentioned in the headline, and one year for the song John singled out as a live favorite. In the 2020s, he closed the loop by saying he was ready to leave the stage for good after his festival performances, which makes his praise for this song read less like nostalgia and more like a judgment about durability.
For listeners, the takeaway is straightforward. If a song can still earn that kind of reaction from its own singer after decades on the road, it is not just album material; it is part of the live machinery that kept Elton John’s shows moving until the end.
