True, its my second favorite behind "Island girl", but I was a kid when it came out and I had snowballs to make and a school bus to catch, I didn't know what I liked or didn't like.
My memory of this song is being 13 years old, riding home at night from the amusement park in the back-facing seat of the huge station wagon. Just staring into space and listening to the song after a day of running in the park. Good memories!
Great arrangement. Great drums and bassline. Great singing. I don't care if it was his "disco" song. It was 1979. This is a superb effort----Thom Bell and Elton did an amazing job on this.
There's a classic rock station in Monroe, Wisconsin that only plays 70's and 80's. They play really different forgotten songs. I just heard this one today. I'm always amazed by what they play. In order to purchase this song before I could just listen on RU-vid, I had to order an old record single from Amazon. Fortunately I have a player and it's great.
Thin Bell is one of the true greats in songwriters and producers. His work in Philadelphia International Records is unparalleled. Love his work.Elton’s Philadelphia freedom is our pleasure
@@jaylene.turner6524 I can’t believe this coincidence. Thom, I had autocorrect on that misspelling, was amazing. I love the Philly International sound and the Spinners where the greatest group. So sad
At some point in 1978 Elton made a side trip to Philadelphia to do some work with the great Philly based producer Thom Bell.( Gladys Knight, Teddy Pendergast, Spinners) and they cut some tracks to see what might emerge. This song eas the strongest of the tracks they cut and it was a huge hit by 79. When you listen to this, the whole Thom Bell production trip is all over it and instantly recognizable.
this great ELTON top-ten classic from the summer of 1979 is especially for my sweet precious wonderful mother Edna Ruth Gaston (age 85) on this very special Mothers Day. I love you more than you will ever know Mama! 💜🧡💙💚💛🤎❤️
This song was recorded in Seattle in 1977 at Thom Bell Studios. This is cool because I have lived in the Seattle area since 1966. An underrated EJ gem.
Remember this well when it came out, and I was in sleepaway camp for the first time. "Mama don't want you/Daddy don't need you..." I was like, thanks, Elton, I KNOW!
Leroy Bell wrote this song. He is the 59 yr. old contestant currently on X-Factor. Such a talented singer, songwriter. I wish him luck. I love Elton's rendition of this song. As always, Elton is magical.
Neither did I. Actually the chorus just popped into my mind and I typed it out in Google and that's how I found out it was Elton. So naturally my next step was to come to RU-vid to relive some of my own teenage memories. I was 15 in 1979 and just one year later I would be getting into progressive rock and would have found this beneath my musical tastes. But as I age I tend to listen to anything I damn well please whenever the mood strikes me and just now I was in the mood for cheesy 70's pop music. ;-b
This is wild to me! I was born in 71, so this song has been around for most of my life. I've heard it a million times. I've heard Elton John a million times singing a million songs, but until just last night I never knew this song is Elton. I don't know who I thought did it, I don't think I ever really thought of it much except as just a song I've heard most of my life. I thought I knew all of Eltons top 40 hits, but just didn't even suspect this was him.
Too many memories to share about this amazing song, so I’ll just say, this is one of the greatest songs of all music! People who grew up with it and experienced the feelings of its effects when it was released, wow they know what I’m talking about.
i freakin love this song....EJ was my first concert as a child...now i am a radio host and i think this is my most played song on my playlists...along with funeral for a friend...epic!!
@@Eevian666 Yes Fleetwood Mac was a great group also. Some of my favorite groups were- Led Zeppelin, ELO, Rolling Stones, The Who, Guess Who, Lynyrd Skinner, CCR, Doobie Brothers, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Eagles, The Doors and so on......
I never knew Elton John sang this song. That music was the business! They used to play this on the R&B stations back in the day! Some of the lyrics are kind of sad, but the tempo was always catchy and upbeat.
I was a teen in the 70's, Elton on 8 track and high school homework. Yep, that was an era of traumatic changes in society and the world. Thanks Elton for all you sang us through it.
Actually is was the 60's with the traumatic changes but then you were too young to understand that. The 70's were mellow in comparison. The Nam war, Civil rights, springing up of terrorist groups , Russia and the Cuban situation, Peak of the Cold war, JFK, Beatles, Woodstock, Cuba and Castro, Watts riots and the list goes on. The 70's really not much but had some good music as did the the 80's but they got their kick again from the 60's sound..
This is one of my favorite songs by this music 🎶 legend. I believe it’s from 1979. It should’ve been a huge hit - especially with Thom Bell handling production chores. “Mama Can’t Buy You Love” a true real life quote set to music 🎵….
It took me like 12 years to find-out that this song - which was played right alongside other 1979 R&B/Soul classics like Raydio's "Can't Change That" and "Jack And Jill" - was none other than our very own Elton John. Such a lost, forgotten classic that is criminally underrated.
Elton's career was in somewhat of a slump at this time. The trademark sound that carried him through the first half of the 1970s had become tired by the end of the decade, which led him to begin experimenting with disco and soul genres. This song came from his collaboration with Thom Bell of Spinners fame, and in August 1979 became his first top 10 hit in several years.
I don’t think that his 2 hit albums Goodbye Yellow Brook Road and Captain Fantastic we’re tired at the end of the 70s are all. I heard this onecon the radio had no idea it was Elton singing this😅
Carlton Dean The Rolling Stones played in Buffalo, NY 6 times, mostly in 70s We called Mick ( A ROOSTER ON ACID ) cause of his energy on stage. That Buffalo that still gets 10-12 feet of snow every winter from Lake Erie
I have been a fan of Elton John the day he put out the song can you feel the Love Tonight tonight on a two-sided cassette and I swear I played it something like 25 times at night I bought a two-sided cassette tape of it and I must have played it at least 25 times in a row I believe he is the best male singer in the world it started collecting CDs of his music
Hard to beat the Philly arrangements. The strings and french horns in addition to the usual horns and rhythm give the song a richness that is hard to achieve with small combos.
I definitely agree....and this song deserved to make it much higher in the charts than #9 (which don't get me wrong is obviously a very good chart position), especially when you consider disco hit its peak that year and this song definitely has some disco vibe to it :)
In my opinion EJs music from 1978-82 was his best. Of course, I am going to hear a lot of people tell me I am full of shit. I always prefered his stuff from this era best.
Wonder why this song doesn't get as much airplay as his songs do? released in spring of 1979 the song reached number 9 on the Billboard pop singles chart.
Elton has one of the best key/tune/chord changes ever. I can't even❤️🤯 And it's NEVER too late to listen to Elton This is also really sad because I can't help but think this song is about his sad childhood😢
I bought this record when it first came out and loved it immediately. I didn't know who Thom Bell was at the time, but I knew that it was a different style from Elton John's typical songs--a sort of Philadelphia sound. Chord progressions reminiscent of When Will I See You Again by the Three Degrees, also from Philly.
SIR ELTON JUST LOVE THIS SONG YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL AND BEAUTIFUL AND BEAUTIFUL AND BEAUTIFUL AND VERY BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE SUCH. A LEDGEND .........ELIZABETH.......2024
Thank you for pointing that out. We used to have a radio show called, "The Lost 45's" and this song was played many a time. I always felt that this song really set Elton's songs for the next decade. But it was all over the radio, so it really wasn't underrated by any measure...
openmind1966 "The Lost 45's"? Some folks, then, thought that this song was in some sensed being overlooked as an oldie. Glad they tried to make up for it. I can simply say that stations I hear play plenty of "Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "Candle in the Wind," "Your Song," etc., but hardly ever this song. I'm glad that I stirred up some emotions about "MCBYL." Y'all are really cool!
This song puts me right back into the mind and memory of spinning and grooving on my parent's rug in our old Toronto apartment. I may have been four years old but I knew a groove when I heard it. This song is boss and as others have said, totally underrated. Love it. /d
elton john has had so many great songs, and bought my first EJ 45 in 1973. Crocodile Rock, and have been listening to him for now 40 years. Wow does time fly. This is clearly one of his greatest songs.
I think this song fell off the face of the earth not long after it made it to the top 10 in the U.S. I just heard it all these years later (on a forgotten very-local AM station that still plays music on weekends, anyway) and I knew it was that one Elton John song that sounded nothing like the rest of his famous hits and basically was from that let's-discotize-everything period so many hitmakers reached for back then, but I am shocked this was at its peak on the radio just before I started high school. Sounds so old and dated, but then look at when it was recorded - October 1977. Music trends were heading somewhere else in summer of '79 and I bet this song only was a hit because of the name of the singer. Listen to the rest of 1979's summer hits - if you know what the '70s sounded like I think you'll agree this song sounds more mid-'70s than a few months away from 1980.
