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Tiny Dancer | Elton John’s

“Tiny Dancer” is a 1971 song by Elton John with lyrics by Bernie Taupin, which appears on John’s fifth album, Madman Across the Water.

Contents


History

“Tiny Dancer” features a piano-based melody during verses, typically inscrutable Taupin lyrics during the chorus, and an arrangement that at the start features pedal steel guitar and light percussion but, transitioning subtly halfway through one of the choruses, by the end is driven by Paul Buckmaster’s dynamic strings, along with a barely heard backing choir. Clocking at 6:13, it was one of the longer radio singles of that period.

The song was written about Maxine Feibelman, a dancer on Elton John’s tour who later married Taupin at his church called Holy Rood Catholic Church. (Later, the song from the Elton John album Blue Moves called “Between Seventeen and Twenty” referred to the divorce of Bernie and Maxine Taupin and the fact that so much had changed from when they first met when he was age twenty and she was age seventeen.)

A non-starter as a single at the time (reaching only No. 41 in the U.S. pop chart and not charting at all in the UK), “Tiny Dancer” did not fade away, but instead slowly became one of Elton John’s most popular songs. A fixture on adult contemporary radio stations, but played by rock stations as well, the song simply grew in popularity.

It was ranked #387 on the 2004 List of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.


Use in popular culture

Tiny Dancer is one of the songs featured at the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas. Along with John’s “Bennie and the Jets”, “Tiny Dancer” appears prominently in the 1970s movie Aloha, Bobby and Rose as well as in the 1990s film My Girl 2.

The song received an additional boost in popularity in 2000 after appearing in a memorable scene in the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous, where it is played over the sound system of a tour bus and no one can resist the urge to sing along to the chorus. Elton John has attested to the film’s popularization of the song, saying in 2004, “I hadn’t played it much until Cameron Crowe put it in Almost Famous. [Now] We get more requests for it than anything else.” An instrumental reprise of the track can also be heard at the end of the movie where Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) visits William Miller (Patrick Fugit) at his home.

“Tiny Dancer” was also referred to by Rihanna in her 2006 hit single “SOS”, and used in the closing scene of the episode “The Dundies” in the US version of the television series The Office. The song figures prominently in “The Americanization of Ivan,” a 1980 episode of the television series, WKRP in Cincinnati.

In Friends Phoebe was asked what her favorite love song was and she responded “The one Elton John wrote about the guy from Who’s the Boss? … you know… [begins singing] Hold me closer Tony Danza…”

In the fifth episode (”My New Coat”) of the Season 2 of the TV series Scrubs, Dr. Cox berates Dr. John Dorian, calling him “Tiny Dancer.”


Other versions

“Tiny Dancer” has often been covered by John Frusciante since the early 90’s, when playing a solo with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, by Dave Grohl on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, by Ben Folds on his 2002 album Ben Folds Live, and by Tim McGraw in 2002 in a somewhat countrified version that he recorded on Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors and performed with Elton at the 2002 American Music Awards.

A sample of the “Tiny Dancer” chorus also makes a memorable appearance in a mash-up by Girl Talk called “Smash Your Head” (from the 2006 album Night Ripper).


References

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