YEAR
2023
INDUCTED BY
Elton John
CATEGORY
Musical Excellence
Bernie Taupin’s songwriting partnership with Elton John is one of the most successful in rock and roll history. Taupin’s narrative songwriting and introspective lyrics served as a precursor to the singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s and his rich, resonant words leave listeners with remarkable images for Elton John and other musicians to melodize.
Bernie Taupin
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Parke Puterbaugh
If ever two things were fated to come together, they are the words of Bernie Taupin and the music of Elton John. Over the course of a partnership that dates back to 1967, Taupin the lyricist and John the artist established themselves as one of popular music’s most successful and long-lived songwriting duos. Their numbers are astonishing: ASCAP’s database credits 276 compositions to the John-Taupin tandem. The vast majority of Elton John’s stratospheric six-decade run of hits – fifty-seven singles on Billboard’s Top Forty, second only to Elvis Presley – were cowritten with Taupin.
