This is not meant to be a disrespect to Elton John nor his fans, but, after 12 years it’s dawned on me that the tune he performed in tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, was actually quite an unworthy effort, in my view.
Maybe it fitted the mood of the times, capturing the depth of feeling that swelled up around Britain at the time, but today it feels woefully…inadequate.
Given Elton’s immense ability as a composer/songwriter one thinks using but the biggest challenge he would have had to face was performing live without crying at the ceremony. How taxing would merely reheating it up then dishing it out would have been? Elton could have done better. Princess Diana, a woman loved by so many.
At the very least an original song would have been fitting, not one previously written to honour attractive but pill-dependent drinks tippling Hollywood actress like Marilyn Monroe. Then again maybe Elton was making some kind of obscure connection between the two blondes from opposite side of the poind. We’ll never know. What we do know is that the Diana loving public deserved better for pretty much the same reasons as above.
Maybe there simply wasn’t enough time to compose something completely new, but the thought came to me after a drea, just how instantly forgettable a tribute it was, in my opinion, to Diana Princess of Wales. I suspect many of you probably won’t even remember the title of the song, let alone the melody.
And that is precisely my point!
“Candle in the Wind” is the song Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote in 1973, a requiem for Marilyn Monroe, who had died 11 years earlier. In 1997, John performed a remake of the song as a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales who died that year. This version reached No. 1 around the world, a much greater success than the original, but was it a fitting tribute to Diana?
[Maybe it took me so long to reach my realisation because I too, though not a royalist per se, could've been caught up in the emotional upheaval on hearing about Diana's tragic death in an horrific car crash in Paris.]
