Honky Château

Recorded outside Paris at the château that gave it a name, this is the album where Elton John traded piano-man pastiche for a working band's swing and found a sound loose enough to carry both a barroom stomp and a song sung from orbit.

"Rocket Man" builds its loneliness slowly, Bernie Taupin's astronaut reduced to a man doing a job while the chorus swells around his isolation, and the restraint is what makes it ache. Against that, "Honky Cat" kicks the door open with barrelhouse piano and horns, proof the same record could hold a lonely voice and a party. "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" turns quiet and observational, a city sketch that trusts a plain melody. The range here isn't showing off — it's a band settling into what it can actually do, and never losing the thread.