Luckiest Music Generation: Elton John - Bennie and the Jets
The relentless piano and the airtight rhythm section make this song epic for Elton John, at the peak of his career.
If Silly Love Songs is that song most people hear when they think, "Summer 1976," then Bennie and the Jets is that song for Spring 1974. It was everywhere.
And I do mean everywhere.
The grade I was in had a major school trip that spring, the first "official" overnight trip I'd ever taken. Our parochial school wasn't big enough to rate a bus, so parents drove us down in their own cars. The mom driving our group was cool enough to let us listen to Top 40, and this song played constantly as we drove into and out of each low-watt local AM station along our route. For four hours. Both ways.
I hear it, and I'm in the back of that station wagon once again, glad to be there when it was still too cool for AC, and heat vents were only in the front of cars then. And weak. The electrifying beat of this song and the warmth from the sun shining on me through the back windshield was plenty to keep me from turning into an icicle.
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