Hard to believe, but there's never been a good single-disc overview of
Elton John's biggest hits available in America until 2007's 18-track
Rocket Man: Number Ones. He's had plenty of collections, including a good single-disc European set that circulated in the late '90s, but
Rocket Man is the first to really offer a solid career-spanning overview as a single-disc set. Of course, even though this pulls number ones from various charts in the U.S. and U.K., there are big hits missing -- whether it's classics like "Honky Cat," which never reached the pole position in the U.S., or latter-day number ones like "I Don't Want to Go on You Like That," which did top the adult contemporary chart -- but it's hard to argue with what's here (with the possible exception of "Sacrifice," which does represent his late-'80s/early-'90s adult contemporary work but isn't one of his best hits).
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