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Elton John · S5 E3
Kiki Dee
'Don't Go Breaking My Heart.' A number-one duet, a genuine friendship, and one of the few people who sees the real Reg
July 1976. A duet credited to mysterious songwriters "Ann Orson" and "Carte Blanche" enters the UK chart at number one and stays there for six weeks, and nobody knows the names are fake.
Elton John and Kiki Dee -- Don't Go Breaking My Heart (1976). Pure Motown pastiche, recorded on two continents, and Elton's first ever UK number-one single. He'd been the biggest pop star in the world for years, but it took Kiki Dee to get him to the top of the British charts.
Don't Go Breaking My Heart, Elton John and Kiki Dee (1976)
Elton composed the melody at Eastern Sound Studios in Toronto, then called Bernie to write lyrics for a title he'd already chosen. Almost none of Bernie's first draft survived. Kiki recorded her vocals weeks later in London, learning her lines from a tape where Elton sang her part in a squeaky high register. The result is warm, bouncy, and impossible not to sing along to.
TAP TO REVEAL: Who was originally supposed to sing the duet instead of Kiki Dee?
Pauline from Bradford
Born Pauline Matthews in Bradford, Yorkshire, Kiki Dee became the first British artist signed to Motown's Tamla label in 1966. She was 19 years old. By the mid-1970s she'd joined Elton's Rocket Records and scored hits of her own, including "I've Got the Music in Me." This was never a backing singer getting a lucky break.
“We're like cousins who only see one another rarely. But whenever we do, we get straight back into our friendship. His life is extraordinary, whereas mine is quite a bit more down-to-earth now.”
— Kiki Dee, The Wild Reed, 2023
Eastern Sound Studios, Toronto
The studio where Elton recorded the backing track for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" during the Blue Moves sessions. He came up with the melody here, two days after his 29th birthday, and sang both vocal parts himself before sending the tape to London.
Don't Go Breaking My Heart: The Numbers
Under what pseudonyms did Elton John and Bernie Taupin write 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'?
Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance!) -- Elton John
The closing track from Blue Moves (1976), recorded during the same Toronto sessions as "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." Six minutes of loose, joyful funk that captures the energy of a band playing for the sheer fun of it. Where the rest of Blue Moves is dark and heavy, this track is pure release.
Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance!), Elton John (1976)
Bernie writes about losing yourself on the dance floor, forgetting everything else. For a man surrounded by addiction and excess, six minutes of pure joy might be the healthiest escape available. Follow along.
The One Who Stayed
Managers come and go, relationships collapse, the band gets fired and rehired. But Kiki Dee remains. Forty-six years after that first number one, she's still the person Elton calls and still the voice he trusts on the biggest stages. In a life full of people who wanted something, Kiki just wanted to be friends.
The duet is a smash, but the album it came from tells a very different story. Next: Blue Moves, a bloated double album hiding one of Elton's most beautiful songs, and the moment the public starts to lose patience.
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