I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues by Elton John

In 1975, Elton John released Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy which became the first album ever to enter the charts at #1. Riding a huge wave a critical and commercial success, John seemed to do no wrong.

Two years later, John announced he was retiring from performing and his next album Single Man, had no top ten singles and was a critical and commercial disappointment. By the time he released Too Low For Zero, Elton John was a shadow of his pass self. Drug and alcohol abuse as well as personal challenges including negative reactions to a 1976 Rolling Stone Interview in which he admitted to be bisexual were taking its toll on not only Elton but also his music.

Instead of having five or six singles off of an album that were hits there were one or two and instead of toping the charts they merely broke the top 10. Amidst this, there were a few songs from this era endure quite like, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues.”

Featured on the album Two Low For Zero, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” only reached #4 on the charts competing with monster hits like “Billy Jean” by Michael Jackson and “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. Once Elton John’s music was at the edge of popular music experiment with form and creating unique sonic landscapes like in the opening of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road with the epic “Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.”



Now Elton sat squarely in the safe and adult contemporary sound of the early 1980s synthesized rock, but this couldn’t overshadow the warm nostalgia and emotional honesty of the “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues.”

Elton divided the beat into the three small parts giving “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” a lilting, almost childlike quality. Elton’s voice contrasts from lines sung as manner of fact statements “don’t wish it away, don’t look at it like it’s forever,” to earnest expressions of support “before you and me run. . . ” at the end of the first verse.

At these moments and also during the chorus, “laughing like children . . ” John uses a rhythmic musical device called a hemiola. Instead of having note last over three small beats like 1-2-3 1-2-3, the notes hold over two small beats 1-2-3 1-2-3. This make the notes seem like they are lagging behind slightly creating drama by accenting the offbeats.

“I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” is about being away from the ones that you love. Reflecting on a relationship, John figures that this feeling of being away from each other must be “the blues.” However, the overwhelming feeling of this song is not “the blues” or sadness from being apart but instead is love, glowing out of soul like a warm memory.

While the most famous lines of this song “Laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder under the covers” are fun to sing along with juxtaposing child like joy with sensuality, it’s the end of the second verse that says it all: “I simply love you more than I love life itself.”

The 1980s didn’t last forever. In the early 1990s, Elton John wrote the music The Lion King and the release of Songs from the West Coast in 2001 a return to John's piano roots which many considered one of his best albums featuring songs like “America Triangle” (which I discussed in this earlier post). Whether it be shows in Las Vegas or his success on Broadway with Billy Elliot, it seems that Elton is back.

It seems that many things left Elton during the 1980s, his health, his commercial success and his creative drive, but "I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” reminds us that he never lost his heart