Elton John

Elton John, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947 in Pinner, Middlesex, is a British singer, songwriter, pianist, and Broadway composer whose work spans more than six decades. Raised in a council house in Pinner alongside his maternal grandparents, John began picking out melodies on his grandmother's piano as a young child, reproducing Émile Waldteufel's "The Skater's Waltz" by ear within his first year of playing. At age seven he began formal lessons, and by eleven he had won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he attended Saturday classes for five years. Instructors noted his ability to reproduce a four-page Handel piece after a single hearing. He left the Academy before sitting his final examinations, and also departed Pinner County Grammar School at seventeen, just before his A-Level exams, to pursue music full time.

At fifteen, John took a job as a pub pianist at the Northwood Hills Hotel, playing Thursday through Sunday. In 1962 he co-founded the blues band Bluesology, which by the mid-1960s was backing touring American soul and R&B acts including the Isley Brothers, Major Lance, and Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. The band later became Long John Baldry's supporting group. During this period John also worked as a session musician and wrote songs for other artists alongside lyricist Bernie Taupin, a partnership that would become one of the most successful in music history. His debut album, Empty Sky, appeared in 1969.

Over the following decades John released 32 studio albums, among them Honky Château (1972), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973), Rock of the Westies (1975), Sleeping with the Past (1989), The One (1992), Songs from the West Coast (2001), The Diving Board (2013), and The Lockdown Sessions (2021). His catalogue of hit singles includes "Your Song," "Tiny Dancer," "Rocket Man," "Crocodile Rock," "Bennie and the Jets," "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," "I'm Still Standing," "Sacrifice," "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," and "Cold Heart." A rewritten version of his 1974 single "Candle in the Wind," released as a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, sold over 33 million copies worldwide and holds the record as the best-selling chart single of all time. John has sold more than 300 million records globally and is the most successful solo artist in the history of the US Billboard charts, with seven consecutive number-one albums in that country. In 2021 he became the first solo artist to place singles in the UK top ten across six consecutive decades. His final concert tour, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, ran from 2018 to 2023 and became the highest-grossing tour on record at the time of its conclusion. His life and career were dramatized in the 2019 biographical film Rocketman.

On Broadway, John has composed music for five productions. The Lion King, which originated as his 1994 animated film score written with lyricist Tim Rice, transferred to the stage and has become one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history. He and Rice also collaborated on Aida, which earned John the Tony Award for Best Original Musical Score in 2000. His subsequent Broadway credits include Lestat and Billy Elliot: The Musical, for which he received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in 2009. His most recent Broadway work is Tammy Faye.

John's accolades extend across multiple entertainment disciplines. His awards include five Grammy Awards, two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and the Kennedy Center Honor, a combination that made him the nineteenth EGOT winner in history. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and is a fellow of the Ivors Academy. In 1998 he was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to music and charity, and in 2020 he was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour.

Beyond music, John served as chairman and director of Watford Football Club from 1976 to 1987 and again from 1997 to 2002, and holds the title of honorary life president of the club. He has been a prominent HIV/AIDS fundraiser since the late 1980s, and in 1992 he established the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised over £300 million since its founding. The following year he began hosting his annual AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Party, which has become one of the most prominent Oscars events in Hollywood. John entered a civil partnership with Canadian filmmaker David Furnish in 2005 and the two married in 2014 following the legalization of same-sex marriage in England and Wales. After developing a severe addiction to drugs and alcohol from the late 1970s through the late 1980s, John has been clean and sober since 1990.