So here it is. The biggest-selling single of all time. Where to begin…?
Something About the Way You Look Tonight / Candle in the Wind 1997, by Elton John (his 4th of ten #1s)
5 weeks, from 14th September – 19th October 1997
I suppose we should begin in Paris, sometime after midnight on Sunday 31st August, 1997. This isn’t really the place to go into the gory details – we all know what happened. I had the dubious honour of breathlessly breaking the news to my family, after an early morning trip to a campsite newsagents. The papers all screamed of a crash, though I’m not sure if they had confirmed the death. Anyway, radios went on and the tragedy unfolded.
Fast-forward to the funeral on September 6th, where Elton John, close friend of the Princess of Wales, performed a new version of his 1973 hit ‘Candle in the Wind’ in her honour. Straight after the service he went to the studio to record it, with Sir George Martin as producer. Seven days after that it had become the fastest-selling single in history.
Interestingly, though, ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ is listed as the second half of this double-‘A’, and so we begin with the completely incongruous ‘Something About the Way You Look Tonight’. It’s a decent enough, mid-career, soft-rock ballad. Very MOR, AOR… whatever acronym you prefer. It rises to a pretty soaring peak, with squealing guitars and Elton giving a full-throated vocal performance, before ending with a strangely flat final minute or so.
It was the 2nd single from his ‘The Big Picture’ album, and the way it piggybacked its way on to the biggest-selling single of all time is actually quite funny. It had been released by itself on the Monday, but by Saturday had been combined with ‘Candle in the Wind’. If it had been left on its own, or perhaps if Diana had fastened her seatbelt, then ‘Something About the Way…’ would probably have been headed for a #24 peak. (Elton was still capable of a decent sized hit in the mid-1990s, but they were an eclectic mix. His most recent Top 10s before this had been a duet with Pavarotti, and a duet with RuPaul.)
On to the main event then, the real reason that people flocked to buy this record. The fact that this nonsense is the best-seller of all time is proof of just how much the nation lost its collective mind in the wake of Diana’s death. At its peak ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ was selling an estimated six copies per second, with news bulletins telling tales of people frenziedly buying fifty or more CDs each. Released on Saturday 13th, by the next day it was announced as the new number one, having sold half a million in twenty-four hours. By the end of its first full week on sale, it had comfortably passed two million.
The lyrics also lay bare the madness surrounding Diana’s death. Goodbye England’s rose, May you ever grow in our hearts… (As an aside, why not ‘Britain’s Rose? It still scans, and she was Princess of the whole island. It really gets my goat when people – often Americans – talk about ‘the King of England’. There’s no such person!) You called out to your country, And you whispered to those in pain, Now you belong to heaven, And the stars spell out your name…
So they start off bad, and get progressively worse. The lowest point probably being the line about us always carrying a torch for the nation’s golden child… My feelings on the posthumous beatification of Diana, on the Royal Family, on the British public in general, aside (stories for another day and another blog…) it’s simply a bad rewrite. The music is fine – the original ‘Candle in the Wind’, and it’s lyrics about Marilyn Munroe, is a standout in Elton’s back-catalogue – but the new words are simplistic, trite and saccharine. It makes ‘I’ll Be Missing You’, 1997’s other elegiac hit, sound like Tennyson.
And I know that Elton was her friend, and that she did lots of charity work, and that the Queen was a bit hard on her (I’ve watched ‘The Crown’!), and that all the proceeds from this record went to a good cause… But still, none of that can change the fact that it’s a truly rotten song, the worst of Elton’s ten chart-toppers (okay, joint-worst with that Ladbaby drivel).
Yet here it is, with an unassailable lead at the top of the all-time sellers list. Over five millions copies sold, with ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ lagging some million sales away, and ‘Last Christmas’ behind that. The glimmer of hope is that these festive hits will slowly catch up thanks to a month’s worth of sales and streams every December, but that won’t happen for many years, if it happens at all. For now, the biggest single ever remains a hastily-rewritten dirge for a dead princess, that nobody has actually listened to in twenty-five years, and an average soft-rock tune that came along for the ride.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
The 1973 original version was a good song, but…you said it all very well. Devalued, horribly over-sentimentalised, a key element in the aftermath of an unexpected tragedy that bitterly polarised the nation and launched a thousand conspiracy theories. Still, funds raised did indeed go to a good cause, so let’s not diss it, and try to forget how many people bought up copies as a souvenir and probably not only never played their copy but perhaps never unpeeled the shrinkwrap it came in, so they’re now gathering dust somewhere. Anybody hoping to make a killing on ebay out of a collector’s item must be so disappointed. P.S. I’ve never seen ’The Crown’ and am one of those minority who never will. IMHO, making TV soap opera featuring mainly living people who are demonised in the interests of making a ‘good’ (ahem) story for ‘great TV’ where storylines are heavily twisted, and where they can’t answer back, sucks big time. If someone can assure me that profits made from televising ’The Crown’ are given to charity in the same way as this record, I’ll revise my views a little more favourably. As ever, thanks for an excellent commentary.
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Thanks! Re. The Crown – I watched it from the start and the earlier seasons are excellent, far enough removed from us that it never felt uncomfortable viewing. By the last series it did feel a lot more tawdry, but I was invested and wanted to see it through. Interesting that you used the term ‘soap opera’, because to me that’s what the Royals are now – a real life, modern soap – and their relevance depends on us taking an interest in their lives, now that they are powerless and largely symbolic. And while I don’t think they should be hounded like Diana was, or like Kate Middleton was more recently, I do think its a case of double-standards when they complain about press intrusion into their gilded, and very wealthy lives. Anyway, I didn’t think my post needed a rant on the Royals, so sorry for hijacking your comment to give my tuppence worth on them…
As a Welshman I’m with you on the England =Britain thing across the pond. Any of your American commentators able to explain why they do it? I was one of the few people at work who didn’t buy this dirge and I remember one woman comparing us to the type of people who’d point blank refuse to buy a poppy on Remembrance Day or throw food in a bin in front of someone homeless for not purchasing it. Strange times indeed. Took months to get back to any semblance of normality. This was also the time when the practice of laying flowers anywhere someone had died became common, and, whilst the death of a royal in a car crash was obviously going to be a big story, afterwards every ‘celebrity’ death made the news. Before Diana, you had to be in the league of Elvis or John Lennon for your death to headline, afterwards even nonentities like Jade Goody got a shout
I can sort of understand why England dominates in people’s minds, but it does tick me off. And let’s not just blame the Americans, as Bernie and Elton were both Brits writing and singing about ‘England’s Rose’.
I was 11 when it happened, so can’t remember the whole hoohaa in much detail. I remember being annoyed that the chart that Sunday was taken off air for some maudlin, downtempo chill-out music. And I remember a friend of my mums being one of those who bought a stack of CDs, and was handing them out willy-nilly. My mum thought she’d gone mad, and refused to take one.
Ironically, Elton never intended the memorial song to be a rewrite of their 1973 hit. He had told Bernie over the phone that it should be “like” this song, but Bernie somehow misunderstood. By the time they he faxed over the new lyrics, it was too late to clarify. And Bernie himself didn’t seem to have much of an opinion of Diana one way or another.
I think ‘Something About the Way You Look Tonight’ is more than decent, myself. I think it’s one of the best latter-day Elton songs. It’s very similar to another song, ‘Recover Your Soul’, from the same album. Bernie is convinced, by the way, that the album is their very worst album (though Elton considers that dubious title should go to 1986’s Leather Jackets).
The third track on the single is ‘You Can Make History (Young Again)’, which had previously been released as an extra track on his Love Songs album.
You’re maybe right about ‘Something About the Way…’ being better than I give it credit for. It’s decent enough for a guy 30 years into a pop career. But it’s overshadowed by the horror-show that it shares disc space with…
Ah, Sir Elton John. One of the most inconsistent artists of all time. When he is on, there’s very few that come close. But when he is off, oh boy, he is off.
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is one of my favourite albums of all time. It, Songs in the Key of Life and The White Album are exactly what I want in double albums. Diverse, varied and eclectic in both style and genre while being uniformly excellent. The original “Candle in the Wind” is a highlight for me off the album. Not the standout, but when almost every song is perfect, being a highlight means your something special.
The 1997 version, I’ve actually never heard before. So I went in with an open mind. I don’t hate it, honestly. It’s just a more boring version of the 1973 version, with an aged vocal from Sir Elton.
I was born in 1999 so I obviously I was never aware of Princess Diana when she was alive. But I of course knew who she was. Everyone knew. I didn’t really have an opinion on her until I read up on her on a whim and I see why people loved her. I can see why people were so grieved. I am however shocked that this is the best-selling single of all time in England. I think it’s the 2nd best-selling physical single of all time (maybe even first, I know there’s debate between it and “White Christmas”).
The other song I also never heard of (I don’t really know much of Sir Elton outside the 70s but apparently his 90s era is considered his worst). It’s too long and I lose interest halfway through, but I like it a bit better than the 1997 version of Candle. It sounds like early 90s soft rock with the orchestration and organ, not late 90s.
I quite liked the original A side, though Elton hadnt done a very good single for a few years, and hadnt done a classic since Sacrifice/Healing Hands, following which he had a vocal chord op which deepened his voice and took all of the emotion out of it. From one of the great acts and singers and showmen of the 70’s and 80’s to someone who was very good at repackaging back catalogue, mixing with new pop stars and even co-writing a total banger (see Scissor Sisters) – but outside that was generally dull.
I never liked the original version much, even though the album is classic, the B side Bennie & The Jets was the dog’s bollocks and took 2 years to get a belated UK single release, and I still remain puzzled by the Candle In The Wind love. I just found it maudlin and dull in it’s original version. So you can guess how much I dislike this awful rewrite, even more maudlin and plodding. But everyone was in shock, Diana’s death came out of the blue, everyone felt sorry for the young princes. It was a national (and global) reaction like no other for a non-pop-star, so I can understand why it did so well – I even bought it, entirely for the charity cause and the bonus Something About…
I still think Candle In The Wind ’97 is the dog’s bollocks. oh hang I mean without “the dog’s” bit.
Yes, Elton has definitely managed to prolong his relevance in a way that’s quite impressive, compared to other stars of the 70s. The way he’s positioned as a sort of pop grandfather to younger stars, from George Michael through Eminem, Britney Spears, Dua Lipa, Sheeran… I wonder whether it was an intentional strategy, getting to that stage where his own hits were drying up, or if he is just a very warm person. He does seem very genuine and likeable, the odd diva-strop aside!
Old Elt’s a bit like me, takes an ongoing interest in new music (rumour has it he did his own personal charts too!) so it would seem natural to him to want to do collabs with all and sundry I’d guess. He even loaned over his back catalogue over to PNAU to create a new work out of it – which really worked, much as they did with the Dua Lipa track. That was Elton’s best album since 1989 IMHO.
Yes, I found out about Starcrawler, a LA glam-punk band, because Elton featured one of their early singles on his… radio show, I think.