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Bernie Taupin, CBE, has written the soundtrack to millions of lives over the last 60 years. His legendary partnership with Elton John, in addition to his work with everyone from Willie Nelson to Courtney Love, has sealed his standing as one of the most successful lyricists of the modern era, garnering multiple accolades and awards, including an Oscar, two Golden Globes, the Gershwin Prize, induction into the Songwriter’s and Rock And Roll Halls Of Fame, and most recently, the Grammys Trustee Award.
But with his new album, The Sea Has No Mercy, this iconic storyteller has created the soundtrack to his own life. His first solo record in almost four decades, as well as his first album ever without a co-writer, it presents a master craftsman at his most personal, distilling 75 years of lived experience into 10 songs that are reflective and revealing, vivid and thoughtful, sometimes hushed, sometimes joyful, sometimes elegiac.
“This is the most intimate record I’ve ever made,” says Taupin of The Sea Has No Mercy. “I don’t want to sound bleak, but I regard this as a late-life manifesto. I’m not sure if any lightning bolt hit me: ‘You need to do this now.’ But it definitely felt necessary.”
Recorded in Nashville with producer Frank Liddell and backing band The Tennessee Stone Cutters, and featuring guest appearances from modern Americana superstar Brandi Carlile and introducing Taupin’s younger daughter, Georgey, The Sea Has No Mercy dispenses with volume and flash. Instead, the power of songs such as Fisherman, the title track and moving One Hundred Ways is in their intimacy and closeness – a sound the man who wrote them describes as “atmospheric folk”.
“I couldn’t have made this album as a younger man,” he says. “I couldn’t have written any of these songs. They’re all completely indicative of Bernie Taupin at 75 years old. They need the life behind them.”
Tracklist
Fisherman
Old Church Road
The Sea Has No Mercy
Elephant Boy
Ghosts of Greater Men
Joker
Come On California featuring Brandi Carlile
The Favor
Old Dog
One Hundred Ways featuring Georgey Devon Taupin