“I love the fact that our songs keep getting reinterpreted and reinvented,” Bernie Taupin said during PBS’ portion of the TCA Winter Press Tour. Inducted alongside Elton John for the 2024 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the press conference was ahead of the March 20th event, which broadcasts tonight at 8:00 pm on PBS stations. “That still is the beauty of the Great American Songbook. All of those songs are still sung and known today. Everybody knows those songs. Whether it's ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ or ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’… That body of work is absolutely phenomenal, and it still sounds phenomenal today.”
(Rahoul Ghose/PBS)
The broadcast performance will close with Bernie Taupin and Elton John on stage together, performing a trio of their signature songs, including “Your Song,” but there’s a tribute concert in the lead-up to that moment. “The coolest thing that ever happened to me was when Elton John turned out to be my close neighbor,” revealed Charlie Puth, who performs “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” during the show. In 2020, Charlie Puth found himself filling in for Bernie Taupin when Elton John popped over to his home recording studio to collaborate. “[He] sat down at my Rhodes 88, and was like, ‘I don't know what we're going to write today. I don't even know if it's going to end up being good, but this is the first thing that I'm feeling, this is what's going to come out of me right now.’ It was in F major, and it ended up being a song on his Lockdown Sessions album called ‘After All,’ which I think is wonderful. And I just ripped off [Bernie] in a way.”
“It wasn’t easy,” executive producer Ken Ehrlich said about the process of artists choosing songs, an embarrassment of riches in this case. The lineup includes past Gershwin Prize honorees Joni Mitchell and Garth Brooks, plus Brandi Carlile, Annie Lennox, Billy Porter, Metallica, and Maren Morris, most of whom had some back-and-forth before finalizing their song selections. That wasn’t the case with Charlie Puth, who had been singing “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” since he was a toddler. “About an hour-and-a-half later, he sent a scratch track of how he wanted to approach it. An hour-and-a-half later, and it was — honestly, I got chills. It’s so wonderful. That is the joy of these shows, is fulfilling these dreams of artists like Charlie Puth, who really, all their lives, have admired, respected, and loved these songs by people like Bernie and Elton, and that’s what these shows are really all about. Yeah, we’re going to hand them a couple of little prizes. It’ll be really nice. They’ll be forever embedded in the Library of Congress, which they already are, by the way. All their songs are there anyway. But to be able to aggregate that and put them on in one night, bring together this collection of admiring and respectful artists. It's a thrill and really exciting.”
“The ones that are my favorites tend to be ones that you might not hear all the time,” Bernie Taupin revealed when asked about his favorite creations. In fact, the two he name-dropped aren’t part of the concert lineup. “There's a song that we wrote called ‘I Want Love,’ which sounds a very banal title, but the song itself is probably one of the best things I think I've ever written and certainly, one of the best things [Elton’s] ever written. There's a song called ‘This Train Don't Stop There Anymore,’ which I love.” Still, the songs that are the most well-known are that way for a reason. “I have great belief in so many of our songs. Not everything that we've written has worked. You stumble at times, and some of the things that you create aren't as good as you would like them to be. But the cream floats to the top, and they're the ones that people know and are familiar with. It sounds corny and it's an old line, but they're like your children. They develop their own lives. And that's the one thing if I can pay our songs a compliment, I think it's that they reinvent themselves over time. They are the gift that keeps on giving in many different ways. I think they have a timeless quality to them that people seem to understand because a younger generation continually comes along and reinvents them. And that's the beauty of songs. They can be reinvented and made palatable for a different time or a new time.”
(PBS)
During the event, Charlie Puth put on a solo concert, just him and an electric piano. The set included two Elton John and Bernie Taupin covers, plus a few original songs and the stories behind them. Elton John & Bernie Taupin: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song premieres tonight at 8:00 pm on PBS. The lineup of performances includes:
- Joni Mitchell, Brandi Carlile, Annie Lennox – “I’m Still Standing,”
- Garth Brooks – “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” & “Daniel”
- Billy Porter – “The Bitch is Back”
- Brandi Carlile – “Madman Across the Water” & “Sky Pigeon”
- Metallica – “Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding”
- Annie Lennox – “Border Song”
- Jacob Lusk – “Bennie and the Jets”
- Maren Morris – “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues”
- Charlie Puth – “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”
- Elton John, Bernie Taupin – “Mona Lisa’s and Mad Hatters,” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” & “Your Song”