Elton John is no stranger to film soundtracks having contributed to the 10x platinum Academy and Globe Award winning soundtrack for The Lion King as well as The Road To El Dorado Soundtrack. He’s also had a number of his songs from his four decade career appear on soundtracks such as Almost Famous, The Country Bears, and Spice World. Elton John returns to the soundtrack front with two new songs, one of which he collaborates with pop sensation Lady Gaga (Hello, Hello) as well as Love Builds A Garden. Nelly Furtado performs a remake of Johns 1972 hit Crocodile Rock. The remaining five Elton John tracks are classic’s from his previous studio albums with John Newton Howard providing compositions derived from some of those hits for the film.

First off the five Elton John classics on this album should be familiar to quite a few listeners. Most of them have been featured in films and covered by other artists; Rocket man (The Rock), Tiny Dancer (Almost Famous), Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (Ella Enchanted), Your Song (Ellie Goulding), Bennie and The Jets (The Beastie Boys), and of course the Nelly Furtado cover itself of John’s Crocodile Rock. Not only are these songs pretty well known their simply great and only consume a small portion of the 14 track soundtrack allowing newer selections to appear.

Hello, Hello is one of the new songs from John in collaboration with lady Gaga. You’d think that with Gaga involved the song would have more of a slight tilt towards her dance club anthems but really the track is straight Elton John featuring a soft orchestrated hum overlaid by John’s classic rock sound and a great chorus that instantly marks it as a must hear track. This marks Lady Gaga’s first involvement in a film soundtrack for a song written specifically for a film. This track will not be featured on her new album “Born This Way” so get it here if you have to have it. John’s other new song, Love Builds A Garden, leans more towards his Broadway work infusing the track with epic sounding piano and emotional vocals covering the narrative of the lyrical. Depending on who your buy the album for it might be a pleasant surprise or it could falter the dynamic of the albums flow.

Finally we have orchestrations from John Newton Howard. In short, amazing. Howard takes the classic cuts from John off the soundtrack and gives them the orchestrated treatment but doesn’t allow the entirety of the track to go towards that alone really building off of them and creating something powerful. What Howard creates here can only be described as the magic of animated film soundtracks of yesteryear with a splash of modernization. Take Bennie and The Jets for example. The track is a perilous journey with ominous notes combining big orchestrated sounds with crafty guitar plucking at intervals and then out of the blue an electronic dance beat that incorporates a quick 8 bit sound before returning to the opening track sound. I really enjoyed all the contributions from Howard that really leaves a lot to the imagination and makes you wonder just where this music will key in for the film. Definitely a great soundtrack. Enjoy.