Sir Elton John has opened up about an incredibly emotional moment when he had to sing about his death.
Elton recalled that his long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin gave him a new song lyric and he began singing but realized after a while that the song was about his demise. The Cold Heart hitmaker “lost it” after that.
During his appearance on the Graham Norton Show, Elton said: “Bernie Taupin gave me a lyric for a song called, ‘When This Whole World Is Done With Me’, and I’m writing the verse (music) quite quickly, and I think this is a really lovely verse.”
“And then I get to the chorus, and I find that it’s about my death, my demise,” he shared.
“And as a 76 year old man, which I was at that time, and having children and having a husband, mortality, and you think about, ‘How long have I got? How long? I hope I’ve got, much longer than maybe I’ve got,” he continued.
“And so by the time I got to the chorus and suddenly realized that I started singing it (and) I lost it for 45 minutes,” he revealed. “It was a very, very heavy moment for me.”
“After 45 minutes of being consoled, I was okay, but I recorded the next day… When you’re singing about being washed out to sea and the end of your life, it took me by surprise,” he noted.
“It’s a really lovely song. I did it all in one take the next day. I just came in and did its vocal and piano at the same time. And I put a brass band at the end of it, because I’ve always loved brass bands, colliery bands, because their music is rather sad – the sound of it,” he added.
Elton John’s new record Who Believes In Angels? will be released on April 4.
