Elton John

Born Reginald Dwight, Elton developed the central songwriting partnership of his career with lyricist Bernie Taupin. Their division of labour allowed words and music to meet in unusual ways: Taupin supplied images, characters and places, while Elton found the melodic and harmonic setting. The self-titled 1970 album, including Your Song, helped establish that partnership before a much larger audience.

The early seventies brought an extraordinary sequence of records, with a working band and producer Gus Dudgeon giving the songs a flexible, recognisable sound. Guitar, bass and drums could make the performances earthy; orchestral arrangements could send them somewhere grander. Elton's piano remained a rhythmic instrument as much as a vehicle for ballads, especially when a song leaned into rock and roll.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, released in 1973, stretches from the extended opening of Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding to the character studies and hard-driving singles that follow. Recorded at the Château d'Hérouville in France, it treats the double album as room to change scenery repeatedly. Candle in the Wind and Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting barely seem to inhabit the same street.

Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy in 1975 turned the partnership itself into the basis of an album, looking back toward the difficult period before recognition. Later work extended into film, theatre and new collaborations, but these records explain the essential musical range: a performer with enormous public flair, and a songwriter capable of making someone else's words feel startlingly immediate.