Elton John‘s history as a collaborator has long been a significant and not-so-secret part of his success over the past half-century. From the 1976 No. 1 “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” with Kiki Dee and a 1993 duets album to stage and film work with songwriter Tim Rice and his longtime partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin, the generous John has never shied away from sharing the spotlight.
His last album, 2021’s The Lockdown Sessions, was recorded during the pandemic with artists ranging from Dua Lipa and Gorillaz to Eddie Vedder and Stevie Wonder. John’s Lockdown Sessions song with another of the album’s collaborators, Brandi Carlile, was so encouraging and rewarding that they’ve teamed up for Who Believes in Angels?, an entire album of new songs cowritten by the pair along with Taupin and producer Andrew Watt.
John couldn’t have chosen a better-suited accomplice than Carlile for his first full-length, single-artist collaboration project since 2010’s The Union with Leon Russell. Both artists have long championed drama in their music, and more so than any of his past singing partners, Carlile slips effortlessly into John’s personal and performance aesthetic to the point where they become one voice at times on Who Believes in Angels? (They first worked together on a song from her 2009 album, Give Up the Ghost.)
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The launching pad for the album started with “Never Too Late,” the pair’s duet from John’s 2024 documentary of the same name. The song appears near the middle of Who Believes in Angels? as an anchor to the tracks surrounding it, but new offerings “The Rose of Laura Nyro,” “Little Richard’s Bible” and “Who Believes in Angels?” are standout cuts on a record shaped by the artists’ shared center. Entering the studio with no plan or songs in the fall of 2023, John and Carlile recorded the 10 tracks in 20 days, using each other as springboards. The result is that these songs couldn’t exist without each other’s presence and input.
That Who Believes in Angels? loses some appeal by the end is likely because Carlile has yet to make a full album that sustains her initial enthusiasm, and John hasn’t done so in decades. But there are moments here – the raucous anthem “Swing for the Fences,” the theatrical pop of “Someone to Belong To” – that are among the best of their respective recent work. As far as John’s long list of collaborators goes, Carlile, save for Taupin, achieves a near-impossible feat: uniting the line where one artist ends and the other starts.
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Gallery Credit: UCR Staff
