Elton John has released a staggering 31 albums throughout his nearly six-decade career. And while they can’t realistically all be gems, a good many of them are. However, the British singer-songwriter’s 1975 album Rock of the Westies has been much maligned despite debuting atop the Billboard 200. On this day in 1975, Elton John notched yet another No. 1 single with the reggae-inspired “Island Girl.” And if the title doesn’t sound familiar to you, that’s the way John and his longtime songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, prefer it.
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Elton John Hasn’t Perfomed This Song Since 1990
In 1975, Elton John was near the pinnacle of his fame. His ninth studio album, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, sold more than 1 million copies in four days. It spent seven weeks atop the Billboard 200. Less than five months later, the “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” crooner released his follow-up, Rock of the Westies.
The album’s lead single, “Island Girl,” is about a Jamaican girl “turning tricks for the dudes in the big city,” and a Jamaican man’s desire to take her back to their home country. It’s a premise that likely would cause more of a stir in 2025, particularly coming from two 20-something British men. And indeed, Bernie Taupin wrote of “Island Girl” in his 2023 memoir Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton, and Me that “the less said about it, the better.”
“That’s one that’s been erased from our work. You will never see it on a greatest-hits album!” Taupin declared in a 2023 interview with Vulture. “It’s horrible. I don’t know what I was thinking of… It was just a straight sexist, misogynistic song.”
Elton John last performed “Island Girl” during a March 1990 show at the Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand.
“I Was Exhausted”
At this point in his career, 28-year-old Elton John had achieved the status of arguably “the biggest pop star in the world.” And the “Rocket Man” hitmaker was thoroughly worn out.
“It was almost a relief when the second single from Rock of the Westies, ‘Grow Some Funk of Your Own,’ wasn’t a huge hit,” he wrote in his 2019 autobiography Me. “For one thing, I was exhausted… And for another, I’d never really set out to have hit singles. I was an album artist, who made records like Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across the Water, and I’d inadvertently become this huge singles machine, having smash after smash after smash, none of which had been intentionally written to be hit singles.”
Featured image by David Redfern/Redferns
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