Songoftheday 10/8/15 - Goodbye Norma Jean though I never knew you at all you had the grace to hold yourself while those around you crawled...

"Candle In The Wind (Live)" - Elton John
from the album Live In Australia - with the Melbourne Symphony (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's Song of the Day comes from British pop superstar Elton John, whose fortunes in America were growing more modest by the mid-80s. After his 1985 album Ice On Fire was able to land a top-10 hit with "Nikita", his next release, Leather Jackets, was a relative flop. With single "Heartache All Over The World" missing the top-40 altogether, it was his first studio album since the concept piece Tumbleweed Connection in 1970 to fail to have a top-40 pop hit in the U.S. In fact, he almost broke his string of years with a top-40 hit except for his featured role on Jennifer Rush's "Power Of Love" in 1986 (he also earned an asterisk for his part in the "Friends" part of Dionne Warwick and Friends' "That's What Friends Are For"). The sole place "Heartache All Over The World" was successful was Australia, where it reached #7 in 1986. Elton's worldwide tour extended Down Under, where he recorded his third live album Live In Australia. His voice was just about shot, as he was set to undergo throat surgery in the following year that would sideline him for quite a while. To make the event (possibly with a chance of being his last) memorable, it would be his last time in his outrageous outfits that he sported throughout the 70s, and for the second half of the show he hired on the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra who with new arrangements from James Newton Howard of some of his classic songs. One of those, "Candle In The Wind", was from his 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, considered his masterpiece. The song had reached #11 on the British singles charts, and went top-10 in Ireland and Australia, but was never released before as a single in the United States.

Elton's live take on his album in 1987 finally got a single release in America, and the timeless theme of fame taking a toll on the young and vulnerable rang true again, and even with his lowered pitch, it became the hit it deserved to be all along, without even the need for the orchestra...

The 1987 version of "Candle in the Wind" returned Elton to the U.S. pop top-10 in January of 1988. The single also made it to #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the song also made the top-10 in his native Britain at #5, #4 in Ireland, and #5 in Canada. Surprisingly in Australia itself the single stalled down at #92. This version was nominated for a Grammy for pop male vocal in 1988, losing out to Sting's Bring On The Night album.

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Here's a great live take of his from London's Wembley Arena in 1977...

In 1991, alternative rock queen Kate Bush covered the song as a single B-side...

After the tragic death of Princess Diana in 1997, Elton performed a rewritten version of "Candle In The Wind" dedicated to her for her memorial, and the resulting single, which benefited charities formerly championed by Diana, spent a record-breaking 14 weeks at #1, and selling over eight million copies in the process....

For the "anniversary" edition of the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, which included covered from current pop artists, Ed Sheeran was tasked with "Candle In The Wind", and he turned it into a folk-rock nugget...

..and finally, here's Elton performing with "Australia's Rose", Olivia Newton-John, in 1980...

Up tomorrow: Seattle rockers identify the woman.