The First Elton John Album He Wrote Without Bernie Taupin

Elton John and Bernie Taupin have written dozens of fantastic hits together. Besides being an incredibly successful songwriting duo, the two have also been lifelong friends. However, there was one time when it looked like the two might go their separate ways, and John had to write one album without his longtime collaborator.

Elton John wrote ‘A Single Man’ without Bernie Taupin

Elton John and Bernie Taupin attend the 92nd Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles — Elton John and Bernie Taupin | Jennifer Graylock/PA Wire

Elton John is an excellent composer, but Bernie Taupin delivered many fantastic lyrics his fans love to sing. Early songs like “Your Song” and “Rocket Man” propelled John as one of the world’s best pop stars and made Taupin a sought-after songwriter.

By the late 1970s, Taupin and John had not split up, but Bernie was beginning to write for other people, leaving John alone. In 1978, John released his album A Single Man, the first without Taupin, with Gary Osborne replacing him as the lyricist. In an interview with Rolling Stone, John admitted he was upset that Taupin started to work with other people, but he needed to allow it for their relationship to survive.

“The first one I made without Taupin,” John explained. “Bernie and I never split up. But we were doing a lot of drugs and drinking heavily, and he was beginning to write with other people, which made me a little jealous, but I decided I’d write with some other people. We never discussed it, we just let it go, and it hurt. It hurt him and it hurt me, but we both had the resilience and the intelligence to know that if we didn’t let each other write with other people, it would be the end of our relationship.”

John’s favorite song from the album was an instrumental

While Elton John was left in an unfamiliar place without Bernie Taupin, he made the best of it. However, it is telling that his favorite song from A Single Man was the one with the least amount of words.

“Song for Guy” was released as the closing track to the album and was mainly instrumental. The record company didn’t want to release it as a single, but John loved the track so much that the disagreement made him switch companies. John was somewhat correct as it reached No. 4 in the U.K., but it barely made a dent on the charts in the U.S.

“My favorite track from A Single Man is ‘Song for Guy’ – it was different, it was an instrumental, it was just me doing everything. It meant so much to me, that track. It was a huge record in England and everywhere else in the world, but it was my first single that didn’t make the Top 100 in the U.S. That was the reason I got bloody-minded and left MCA Records. I wanted to have an instrumental on the charts. They said, ‘You can’t.’ So I said, ‘F*** you, I’m joining Geffen.’ In retrospect, that was a big mistake.”

How did ‘A Single Man’ perform on the charts?

Upon its release in 1978, A Single Man received mixed reviews from critics. However, it still performed relatively well on the charts. It peaked at No. 8 on the U.K. Album charts and No. 15 on the U.S. Billboard 200. However, decades later, it’s not one of his best-remembered albums. There isn’t a song on it that has truly stood the test of time. Casual audiences wouldn’t recognize many of the songs on it.

A Single Man wasn’t a flop, but it proved that Elton John was at his best when his words came from Bernie Taupin.

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