‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ – Elton John
John and lyricist Taupin flew to Kingston, Jamaica, to record John’s sixth album, which was inspired by the Rolling Stones’ Goats Head Soup. “The studio was surrounded by barbed wire, and there were guys with machine guns,” Taupin recalled. The duo wrote 21 songs in three days because they were too afraid to leave their hotel, including “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”
‘Radio Free Europe’ – R.E.M.
“We hated it,” Peter Buck remarked of the sound on the initial version of “Europe,” which was released on the independent label Hib-Tone. “It was supposedly mastered by a deaf man.” R.E.M. rerecorded it for Murmur with a richer melody and tighter rhythm, describing it as “like Motown.” Michael Stipe muttered his lyrics, which were a hazy riff on US cultural imperialism, because he hadn’t completed composing them by the time the session began.
