On Legacy Artists, but One in Particular
This piece contains extensive discussions and examples of racism and other prejudices. If you are sensitive to seeing those topics, it may not be the piece for you ‒ and that’s ok. Many deal with some form of discrimination or aggression every day, and for those people, there’s no reason to have to stomach more of it.
In 1976, Bob Dylan said the N word on tape. Hard R, rhymes with “trigger.”
That’s not to make light of it: Dylan literally rhymed it with “trigger” on his 1976 folk-rock protest epic “Hurricane.” The song famously tells the story of the unjustly-incarcerated Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, from the initial crime he didn’t commit all the way to the kangaroo trial that put him behind bars. It rages against the machine, venomously tearing down cops, biased juries, the prison complex, white moderates, the media, and the deeply racialized society that was America in 1976 (and remains America in 2026). Meanwhile, discourse on the usage of the N word 6 minutes into the song has itself raged for over 50 years.
Defenders will say that Bob Dylan and his cowriter obviously understood the shock value of the choice, were trying to demonstrate the racial dynamics in both black and white society around the trial (in the song, the N word is used in the context of black people’s perceptions of Carter), and that at a birds-eye view the song was a pragmatic success. After all, the Carter trial was kept in the zeitgeist, eventually leading to the man getting the freedom that was so cruelly, pointlessly ripped away from him. “Hurricane” is undeniably a major part of that story.
Detractors will say that in using such a slur as a white man, Bob Dylan proliferated the same casual racism he tried to quell. They’ll say the usage of the word was gratuitous for the song’s message. And they’ll argue he ultimately appropriated black trauma to give himself an edgier, more radical ethos and lend credibility to his continuing status as a protest artist.
I think the detractors are intuitively correct, and to deny ground to that position requires a level of white ignorance. Bob Dylan did not need to say the N word to get justice for Rubin Carter. Nothing about the story he’s telling necessitates embodying hate in that way, and the song has plenty to say without it. It “being a different time” doesn’t change the fact that most white artists were not, in fact, saying the N word in their songs. The song demands respect in various ways even today (among them, the fact that it’s extremely good), but it necessitates nuance. Two things must be kept in mind. It played a role in freeing an innocent man, and Bob Dylan really should not have said the N word. It stains his career ‒ ethically, I argue, it has to.
In 1976, Bob Dylan appropriated Mexican culture in a fashion that’s genuinely embarrassing. On “Romance in Durango,” a song that aesthetically pulls from Mexican folk and mariachi, we get references to chili peppers, Aztec ancestors, the Mexican Revolution, and more. A few lines are in Spanish. It is difficult to listen to, as Dylan puts every Mexican and/or Spanish-related object and stereotype he can think of into one song. He paints Mexico as a dirty, dangerous, barren, poor, and traditional to the point of backwards-ness country. It’s the song equivalent of donning a pancho, sombrero and tape-on mustache from Party City for a Halloween costume.
I am not an expert on Mexican music, so it would not be right to claim whether he effectively interpolated the musical aesthetics or not. What I can say is that it was written by two Americans, produced by an American, and features virulent xenophobe Eric Clapton on guitar (though his most famous rant wouldn’t happen until later in ‘76). Is “Romance in Durango” these people’s song to write, their story to tell?
Anyways, this piece is actually about Elton John. Now, you would be hard-pressed to find a bigger Elton fan than me. I have ~330 songs of his in my personal library. One year, 82 of my top 100 most listened songs were by him. I can identify just about any song in his catalog within 2-3 seconds of hearing it, and there’s video proof. Despite his status as one of the greatest songwriters to ever do it, I still think he’s underrated. His deep cuts are absurd, in both their vastness and their quality. Go put on “Lies,” right now. I’m serious.
Doesn’t this rule? Hold on, give it a little bit to get to the chorus… This is what I’m saying. No one has heard of this song, or even this album, yet it’s an absolute banger.
Now, Elton famously almost never wrote his own lyrics. He instead wrote songs to the words of his lyricist, Bernie Taupin. Taupin’s written lyrics of every kind over the years (there’s like 500 that made it out of the studio, after all) ‒ love songs, tribute songs, linear narratives, character portraits, literal gibberish at least twice. His specialty, though, is impressionist storytelling and worldbuilding. He crafts atemporal vignettes with scattershot details that affect the mind as a novel would, or a Monet. “One More Arrow,” “Bennie and the Jets,” “Levon,” “House” and “The Wide-Eyed and Laughing” all craft not just characters but entire realities out of thin air. Like a brief look out a train window, the world of a Taupin lyric whooshes past you, giving but a glimpse. Your eye catches what it can before it’s gone, leaving you to build the rest of the world, find the rest of the meaning, on your own. A vivid portrait is thus created in collaboration between the musician, lyricist, and listener. His best work is a remarkable accomplishment and unlike any other lyricist.
You get the point. You can also probably see where this is going. I’m Elton’s strongest soldier, but every time I say that, I feel an anxiety. There’s a Great Tusk I’m not addressing ‒ there’s a lot of Elton John songs that should be famous, but for the wrong reasons. Talking about it, though, puts me in a difficult position. I don’t wish to “Hurricane” in this piece. I think there’s a need for specificity in the language, themes and content present in many of these songs, to understand exactly what I’m talking about when I call a song racist or sexist. At the same time, I don’t want to use the extremity of it all for shock value or reproduce the same traumas I’m criticizing. As such, I’ve elected to largely avoid direct quotes of abject appropriation or -isms in this piece. You are welcome to listen to these songs or read their lyrics yourself as a supplement, but I’ve chosen to prioritize treading lightly and cultural awareness over the most damning possible indictment.
“Indian Sunset,” from 1971’s “Madman Across The Water” (in my opinion, his finest album overall), is a “Romance in Durango” but worse. The song is an orchestral suite with piano-led verses. It attempts to be a historical epic about the brutal genocide of Native Americans, their fight for survival, and the importance of maintaining cultural values and traditions in the face of an existential threat. It’s a linear narrative tinged with tragic inevitability, as the warrior protagonist of the story chooses suicide in an idyllic field over death at the hands of white colonizers. Like “Romance,” in reality it’s a parade of Native American-y Things to make the song feel more like the culture in an abstract, Great Value way. The very first line references teepees. It’s tacky, stereotyping, reductive, and uncomfortable. The worst moment in the song comes from the end of the second verse.
I heard from passing renegades, Geronimo was dead
He’d been laying down his weapons when they filled him full of lead
That line is naturally accompanied by an orchestral swell, functioning as one of the song’s climaxes. There is one problem, though: it’s not true. Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909, long after his days of combat were over. Taking a real, laudable historical figure and twisting his story (likely through sheer ignorance) to add a dramatic beat to a story about a fake indigenous warrior is indefensible. It’s gross. Even this song at its best, though, without the historical inaccuracies and reductive imagery, would be a mistake. It feels fundamentally wrong for Elton John, the British guy, to talk as if he is a Native American warrior and family man of the late 1800s. It’s not his story to tell.
Unfortunately, Elton remains proud of “Indian Sunset.” He pulled it out in concert until the end of his touring days a few years ago, noting in an interview how it’s a deep cut no one has ever heard of that blows people away. I do wonder how the indigenous members of the crowd felt.
Perhaps more unfortunately, “Indian Sunset” is not the most egregious example in his discography of this kind of appropriation. That would have to go to a song released the next year, 1972’s… “Slave.” It is indeed a folksy song from the perspective of an antebellum slave who describes the effects of abuse on his community and dreams of burning it all down to end the generational trauma. It is a viscerally unpleasant experience to hear Elton talk about freeing “his” brothers. There’s even some misogyny mixed in for good measure. The song is disgusting, and generally sucks ass. The chorus opens with him just repeating the word “slave.” How this happened, or anyone gave it the green light, is beyond me. It’s unforgivable. Oh, and there’s an Alternate “Fast” Version of the song as a bonus track.
Let’s zoom out for a second. To the majority of us who didn’t live through the era, it can be hard to communicate the groundbreaking scale of Elton’s stardom in the 70s. For example, the first album to ever debut at #1 on the Billboard charts was his 1975 album, “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.” This is the discography of an artist with history-making influence and success. By the way, the second album to ever debut at #1? Elton’s second album of 1975, “Rock of the Westies.” Its lead single, “Island Girl,” hit #1 as well. If you’ve listened to that song for 45 seconds, this fact should be shocking. While undeniably extremely catchy, “Island Girl” is also undeniably, um, terrible. The racism and sexism and probably classism need no description, as it’s absurd to the point of bordering on comedy. It’s trying to be playful but the effect is nauseating.
Meanwhile, the very next song on the tracklist is a rock cut that replaces Caribbean prejudice (but don’t worry, we’ll be back soon) for Mexican, as “Grow Some Funk Of Your Own” bangs as hard as it offends. It tells the story of Elton attempting to use his “English charm” to seduce a woman in Mexico, before her boyfriend comes in and threatens his life in broken English. Castanets accent the prechorus. Like “Island Girl,” a veneer of tongue-in-cheek “isn’t this so crazy?” energy attempts to distract from the truth that it is actively harmful to the image of Mexican culture. It’s a pretty staggering two track run.
There’s more, though. There’s actually so much more.
1973’s “Jamaica Jerk-Off” expectedly appropriates Jamaican culture in a weird, horny way, discussing various places he enjoys erotic boogaloo and honky-tonking. It paints Jamaica as a land of sex, guitar-playing, dancing, and otherwise-lackadaisical recreation, as if the tourist conception of the place is the actual place. The song itself is tacky and gauche, taking vaguely aesthetic Jamaican influences to put together a song that, irrespective of its cultural context, could only ever be fine. This was all likely intuitive from the song’s title, a groan-eliciting double entendre.
1988’s “Japanese Hands” is even worse than you’d think. It’s about getting a massage in Japan and really enjoying it. Like “Indian Sunset,” it’s filled with generically Japanese paraphernalia and a belittling, surface-level cultural fascination. The O-word is used, and there’s a horrid line about the masseuse’s eye shape. Both Taupin and John were coked out of their minds during the production of this song, written during what Elton John called the worst year of his entire life. Thus, there’s an insanity plea of sorts that can be pulled for this one. While we’re on the topic, “Don’t Trust That Woman,” “Too Young,” “Poor Cow,” and “Since God Invented Girls” all stand out for further study of the late 80s cokenucopia of songs that are really weird about women.
Getting back to 1973, “Texan Love Song” is likely the worst song in his catalog. It is an honest-to-god hate anthem, whose concept I struggle to describe in words without “Hurricane”-ing. Essentially, it’s about a putridly-racist and ignorant Texan who blames black Americans for all of society’s problems, and wants to start a race war. There is a slur in it, and the song is delivered in full sincerity. There is no moment of lyrical clarity reflecting on the real sin in American society, these ideologies of hate. It is an embodied character portrait of someone fundamentally evil that has no commentary on that fact.
An analog comes to mind ‒ 1970’s “My Father’s Gun.” That song is about a confederate soldier who seeks to avenge his father by hopping on the next boat to New Orleans and rejoining the fight. That song similarly lacks a chastising moment, but much of the espoused ideology has an obvious ironic twist. He looks forward to the “justice” and “freedom” that’ll ring out when the war is won. But as we know, the confederacy loses. And as we also know, it was founded on upholding the most unjust system humanity’s ever conceived. This character isn’t thinking about slavery at all ‒ instead, for petty personal reasons and nonsense ideas of legacy, he has decided to set out once more towards his own death to fight for the worst imaginable cause. The chorus repeats over and over in the outro, a mantra-like statement that he’s heading to New Orleans “‘cause there’s fighting there and the company needs men.” His motivation becomes circular as he’s reduced to just another soldier, another envoy of hate. It encourages reflection on the society he was raised in and the associated values that led this young man to this moment. After all, if his father just died in the war, he is likely a teenager.
“Texan Love Song” is like if “My Father’s Gun” had a verse about how much the main character loved slavery and couldn’t wait to defend it. It’s shocking with no tact, no goal, and the end result is unadulterated hate and misery.
I have saved one example for last. And here, actually, I come to Elton’s defense. 1974’s “Ticking” is chilling, shocking, deeply emotionally affective, and one of the greatest songs he ever wrote. It tells the story of a boy growing up in an intensely religious household. He is traumatized by the instilled fear of sin and eternal damnation from his mother, who warns him that he’ll never get to heaven (alongside other vague biblical platitudes). It is also implied that racism and a broad fear of others was instilled in the boy from a young age. His growing mental issues are ignored by both his religious leadership and his parents ‒ after all, the boy confesses his sins every Sunday, so he must be fine. It all culminates in a mental breakdown in a bar in Queens. In the middle of a manic episode, he attacks someone who tries to calm him down and screams out for a priest. The police get called, but in the meantime he pulls a gun. You hear both his inner and outer thoughts as he feels under attack by everyone around him. Meanwhile, the gun butt feels “so smooth and warm,” giving him a feeling of control he desperately craves. From there, it spirals into a mass violence event. Eventually, the police convince him to leave the building and he meets his end, one last act of brutality.
It is a haunting sermon on prejudice, religiosity, and violence. It demonstrates how evangelical upbringings can traumatize children and lead to fundamental developmental issues around control, self-confidence and security. It also features the use of both an anti-Asian and an anti-black slur in the bar scene. It’s shocking, but I argue, not gratuitous. For one, it is clearly framed as awful and stemming from deep-seeded trauma. For two, the intensity of the language speaks to the fundamental ills of white America, the melting pot of social forces that lead to mass violence like this. The slurs are used in a fashion that suggests this character thinks of others this way consistently. It forces the listener to ask, why? Thus enter themes of religion and generational racism. “Ticking” emphasizes the contrast between the ostensible unity promoted by Christianity and the actual prejudice that too often accompanies it. The existential fear inherent to devout Christianity seeps into an all-consuming fear of everything and everyone. Meanwhile, the boy’s parents have no issue with, and may have actively encouraged, this kind of racist thinking. He is left broken, spiritually and personally. Everyone around him is a threat, an other, a slur, a barrier between him and salvation. All of this is captured in the choice of language, and it is central to building a portrait of the character.
In my opinion, the key is that this is John and Taupin’s story to tell. It is a message from a white artist to white western culture about the dangers and ugly realities of its ideological tenets, and an unbelievably effective one. I understand the position some may hold that this song, too, is beyond the pale of what should be acceptable. However, I believe that its artistic and narrative merit is enhanced by its language, to some degree. It is a striking contrast with the rest of the discussed songs, demonstrating one of the extremely rare instances that racial prejudice can belong in a white artist’s work.
So, where does this all leave us? I think it all raises one primary question: what do we make of the artists white Americans (and Brits, I guess) have raised to godhood status, and their historiography? One of the best-selling artists of all time (and, to my ears, best period), with at least a half dozen songs everyone knows, has a long and storied history of indefensible prejudice in his music that even outlasts the early 70s. With some of it, he hasn’t disavowed but instead actively embraced it late into his career. What I covered, also, was not exhaustive. The conversation around Elton John, and various other legacy artists, feels incomplete without an honest appraisal of their full body of work, and that appraisal has serious and overlooked missteps to contend with. It’s not the fault of casual listeners that they aren’t familiar with the questionable deep cuts. However, it is the responsibility of those who know to hold conversations with integrity and transparency, challenging their own complacency and indifference. We don’t need to cancel Elton John and Bernie Taupin, probably, but we do need to approach them with far more nuance and a far more critical lens. Also, like, the two of them should probably disavow “Indian Sunset,” and apologize for at least 5 of these.
