Stars have lined up for years to perform a duet with Elton John

Elton John has performed with many of today’s big names in music, and, for decades, they have lined up for the opportunity to sing with him – with mixed results.

Dua Lipa and Elton John last year

Hold Me Closer

I wonder how Elton John will go playing piano with just five fingers. He extended the hand of friendship to Britney Spears – “Britney was broken. I’ve been broken and it’s horrible – and agreed to a duet with the troubled one-time Mouseketeer.

Rodent-like, the ungrateful Spears has bitten it off. Hold Me Closer, their joint new single, is so awful that it’s almost … no, it’s just ghastly. It adopts the melody and many of the lyrics from John’s 1971 song Tiny Dancer which stuck out back then because of the painfully exaggerated American drawl John applied to it.

Too long for radio (and an ugly radio edit crudely deleted the context of the song that over the decades fans came to love) it sat for years mostly unappreciated on the Madman Across The Water album. (When John toured here in late 1971 for the first time record company executives had to keep test pressings of the then upcoming album out of his sight: they had misspelled it to read Madam Across The Water.)

But Tiny Dancer evolved to become one of John’s most popular songs and gained momentum when it was used in the key scene towards the end of the 2000 movie Almost Famous. So it is a considered move by Elton to recreate it. We know why he worked with Spears, but not why he would allow this echoey collection of studio tricks to so obscure the vocals and its original melody. Through the slurry one hears a line or two bubble up from Spears, and “babe” a little too often. It has the feel of a 1990 Ibiza DJ chillout track done on the cheap.

Piano Man

Billy Joel and Elton John first launched their Face to Face tour in 1994, crossing Australia playing Subiaco Oval, the ANZ Stadium in Brisbane and then the Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne Cricket Grounds. There was an undeniable logic to bringing them together – their fan bases largely overlap. Most of the songs (they would sing each others, their own, a few early rock’n’roll classics and then duet on many more) were worthy and honest renditions of their hits, but a few came out better than others. Sensing that Piano Man had long worn out its welcome, but that Joel was obliged to perform his signature hit, John put special effort into the lines he was given, including the first verse, and it worked well, as did his long-time guitarist Davey Johnstone’s turn on mandolin which was deservedly pushed much more forward in the mix than Eric (Dueling Banjos) Weissberg’s in 1973.

Live like horses

By 2007 Elton and his lyricist Bernie Taupin had been short of steam for decades. Their brief purple patch from 1970 to 1973 was remarkable during which they posted most of the classic songs for which we remember then. It was a vertiginous fall from 1974 with the release of Caribou. After it most Elton albums arrived with a single, usually great song, and not much else. Their response this time was to summon a gimmick – Luciano Pavarotti. The song hardly deserved to be called a duet, but nonetheless, Pavarotti steals the show in a glorious performance in the last months of his life singing Taupin’s words in Italian, in which, perhaps, they made more sense.

Elton John and Rod Stewart performing in Las Vegas in 2002. Picture: Getty Images

Sad songs (say so much)

Greil Marcus summoned it up best in 1979: “Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone be¬trayed his talent so completely”. In this 2013 version Stewart and John sound like they are auditioning for a season in Vegas.

Don’t go breaking my heart

Apparently, John wrote the first words for this and Taupin completed them. The melody is fine, and the lively orchestration does its best to keep it all afloat. Elton had already sung the part he’d planned for Dusty Springfield, but she was unwell, so Dusty’s back-up singer Kiki Dee came on board. Dusty would surely have phrased her parts in her unique style. Dee was employed by Elton’s Rocket Records and dutifully repeated them as scored. It’s hammy and cheesy. Thank God for punk which was minutes away.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Ray Charles final recording. John knew how important this sessions was to the soul giant – and to him. And they both give it their all. It was the last track to be completed for the album Genius Loves Company, which won nine Grammys, including album of the year, became Charles’ biggest selling record and his first No.1 in 42 years. Charles died three weeks before it reach the shops.

You’re still the one/something about the way you look tonight

A sprightly pairing with Shania Twain and her tip-top band. When Elton concentrates on a performance he wishes to get right, he loses control of his right eyebrow. Just look at him during Princess Diana’s funeral. Here it goes again.

Cold Heart

The intrigue of this tracks builds as the constituent parts are unpeeled and fall into the mix – Rocket Man, Sacrifice, Kiss The Bride and the 1976 oddity Where’s the Shoorah? The arrangement leaves Elton and Dua Lipa’s vocals untrammelled access to the front, and it is all better for it. It’s clever, it’s clean and the melodies flow gently over each other and the insistent dance beats that frame it all.

Don’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me

George Michael first sang a storming duet version of this – the last great moment of Elton John Mark I – at the London end of 1985’s Live Aid (and with Kiki Dee on backing vocals). The live version that topped the charts five years later was recorded, also at Wembley, during a Michael solo tour. It’s slick but they try too hard to sand away the knotty imperfections of the human hand – and it’s too beautiful a song for that.

Ordinary Man

Ozzy Osbourne’s Ordinary Man arrived with news of the Parkinson’s disease the former Black Sabbath singer concedes will kill him. It is a Lennonesque look back on his fully lived life. When he’d completed the lyrics with others he decided it sounded like an Elton John song and invited Elton to join him on it. Fifty years ago Black Sabbath’s elegant, piano-driven ballad Changes took us all by surprise. No surprises here, just a gentle farewell. Elton takes a back seat, it’s not his life. But his graceful contributions have his Sabbath boss in tears.