Serious Contenders: Elton John, "Madman Across the Water"

Elton John's career with Bernie Taupin is probably one of the most fruitful, rewarding partnerships in pop music history, right up there with Lennon/McCartney and just ahead of Steinman/Loaf. I don't have to love "Your Song" or "Candle In The Wind" but I can respect how ably they and songs like them hit that commercial sweet spot, all while John and Taupin had their other feet on the art-rock side of things. I don't have any goddamn idea what "Madman Across The Water" is supposed to mean or represent, but it gives me a chill, and I think it's pretty boss that this is on the same album as "Tiny Dancer" and the same career as "Rocket Man."

Covers: William Shatner Fiesta

By a shocking coincidence, barely a month after I began "Cover Tuesdays," the Birthday of one of the most noteworthy cover artists of all time occurs on a Tuesday. Today, William Shatner himself turns 80. The clip of him performing(??) "Rocket Man" at the Sci-Fi awards is the sort of thing YouTube was invented for. It's intended as a semi-serious statement on identity and perception of the self, but it comes across as a pompous former Starship captain sitting on a stool smugly smoking a cigarette weirdly mumbling lyrics and helping to form the public parody of him we all know... I mean really, why did he have to say "I'm not the... MAN they think I am at home..." like that? Because it's hilarious is why. The second Shatner is delightfully hammy, and the third one is just goddamn ridicul-awesome.

I also had to make sure to get a version where you get Bernie Taupin's introduction. he man is clearly unhappy with his life as this was during a hiatus from his collaboration with Elton John, and it looks like he's reading his speech with a gun pointed at his head from just out of frame. You can tell he's skeptical of Shatner's take on his work.

Two and a half decades later, Mr. Shatner resumed his recording career with he critically acclaimed (yes!) Has Been, which featured this glorious interpretation of Pulp's cult hit single "Common People," which is worth every cent to hear Shatner snarl "You'll never dance and drink and screw 'cause there's nothing else to do!!" Wisely, his collaborator Ben Folds gets Joe Jackson to handle most of the singing parts, but Shatner wrings a real defiance out of his work, despite his questionable relationship to "common people." It's funny: "Rocket Man" made him a laugh, but "Common People" made him an artist.