Elton John New Album To Feature Dua Lipa, Stevie Nicks, Gorillaz
Elton John has announced his new album, The Lockdown Sessions, due 22 October. The collection is a series of duets, featuring Dua Lipa, Stevie Nicks, Gorillaz, Stevie Wonder and many more.
In a statement, John explained how the album came about: “The last thing I expected to do during lockdown was make an album. But, as the pandemic went on, one‐off projects kept cropping up. All the tracks I worked on were really interesting and diverse, stuff that was completely different to anything I’m known for, stuff that took me out of my comfort zone into completely new territory,” he said. “And I realised there was something weirdly familiar about working like this. At the start of my career, in the late 60s, I worked as a session musician. Working with different artists during lockdown reminded me of that. I’d come full circle: I was a session musician again. And it was still a blast.
“Some of the recording sessions had to be done remotely, via Zoom, which I’d obviously never done before. Some of the sessions were recorded under very stringent safety regulations: working with another artist, but separated by glass screens. But all the tracks I worked on were really interesting and diverse, stuff that was completely different to anything I’m known for, stuff that took me out of my comfort zone into completely new territory.”
In total, The Lockdown Sessions features 23 other artists alongside John, including his previously released songs The Pink Phantom with Gorillaz and 6LACK, Learn To Fly with Surfaces, and Nothing Else Matters with Miley Cyrus, WATT, Yo-Yo Ma, Robert Trujillo, and Chad Smith. Among the new songs are a posthumous Glen Campbell duet of I’m Not Gonna Miss You, from the documentary, Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, and One Of Me, which Lil Nas X announced today for his debut album, Montero.