Sir Elton John would love to sing with Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Taylor Swift.
The 77-year-old music legend – who retired from touring following the conclusion of his ‘Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour’ in 2023 – has reeled off a list of modern female pop stars he’d love to collaborate with, also name-dropping Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams.
He told Variety: “There are plenty of young singers around. I mean, this has been the summer of the great female singers and songwriters. Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Charli XCX and Gracie Abrams — they’ve just ruled it. They’ve made records that are really good songs, and they brought a lot of joy to the people. And the songs are really good songs, so I’m happy to sing with any of those people.”
The ‘Your Song’ hitmaker dubbed ‘Shake It Off’ hitmaker Taylor, 34, the biggest “phenomenon” since The Beatles.
Asked if he’d like to do a duet with her, he replied: “She’s a great songwriter, she’s a great artist and she’s a phenomenon. I’ve never seen a phenomenon like that since the Beatles, and she works her a** off, so good luck. Good luck to her.”
Elton also recalled how he fought to get his Oscar-winning tune ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight?’ in Disney’s ‘The Lion King’.
He said: “The whole Disney team came down to Atlanta and showed me a rough cut of the nearly finished film, and there was no ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’. So I asked, ‘Where’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?’
“And they go, ‘Well, we just couldn’t find a place for it,’ and I go, ‘It’s a love song. Every Disney animation film has a great love song. You really ought to reconsider this.’
“I was quite astonished that it wasn’t there, and to Disney’s credit, they went back and found a place for it, and it won the Oscar.”
The ‘Tiny Dancer’ hitmaker also felt that his other tune in the 1994 classic, ‘The Circle of Life’, was deserving of the Academy Award.
He explained: “Because it’s the song of ‘The Lion King.’ ‘The Lion King’ starts and you hear ‘The Circle of Life,’ and you think of ‘The Lion King.’ To me, that’s the song that makes ‘The Lion King,’ but I’m not going to complain.”