Happy Birthday to Elton John's longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin, who turns 72 on Sunday (May 22nd)!!! Taupin, who first teamed up with Elton in 1967, wrote the lyrics to such instant classics as “Bennie And The Jets,” “Philadelphia Freedom,” “Daniel,” “Border Song,” “Take Me To The Pilot,” “Country Comfort,” “Rocket Man,” “Mona Lisa And Mad Hatters,” “Burn Down The Mission,” “I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues,” “Tiny Dancer,” “Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me,” “Candle In the Wind,” “The Bitch Is Back,” “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word,” “Don't Go Breaking My Heart,” “I'm Still Standing,” “Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting,” “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny),” “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Your Song,” and many others.
In February 2019, Elton John and Bernie Taupin won their first joint their first joint Oscar for “(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again” — the theme to last year's Rocketman biopic, which was sung with Elton's silver screen counterpart, Taron Egerton.
In 2013 Elton and Taupin were presented with the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award at the Songwriters Hall of Fame Annual Induction and Awards in Manhattan. Elton recalled how the pair — who have often been called the “Lennon & McCartney of the '70s” — first teamed up: “I went into Liberty Records in London when I was in a band called Bluesology, and I was getting fed up with playing cabaret, and I thought what can I do — maybe I can write songs. So I went to Liberty Records, saw a guy called Ray Williams, I said, listen, 'I can't write lyrics, but I'm sure I can write melody.' And he said, 'I've got a pile of lyrics on the desk from a guy from Lancashire called Bernie Taupin, take those away.' You can't get more ridiculous than that. And I took them away and I started writing to them. And I've always. . . really, it's always been the lyrics first.”