As Elton John’s collaborator-in-chief, Bernie Taupin has written lyrics to some of the most popular songs of all time – Rocket Man, Candle In The Wind, Your Song, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, I’m Still Standing and many more. But nobody’s perfect, and as revealed in a new interview, Taupin still cringes at the mention of one hit song he co-wrote in the ’80s.
Speaking to MOJO magazine, Taupin discusses his whole career, from his early days with Elton all the way through to his new solo album The Sea Has No Mercy.
He talks about several of the key songs that made Elton a superstar, saying of the breakthrough hit Your Song: “It wasn’t written about anybody in particular, but Elton at the time thought it was. I wrote it when I was 17, 18. It came from a very idealistic place. A very virginal place, because I was. My experiences were absolutely nil. But I remember he took that lyric and, wearing his dressing gown, sat down and wrote the music.”
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Taupin also paints a picture of how he and Elton worked together on the classic 1972 album Honky Chateau, recorded at the residential studio at Château d’Hérouville near Paris.
“There was a piano in the canteen,” he recalls, “and as I completed the songs I took them down and stuck them on the piano. Elton would come in the morning while the band was having breakfast and he’d write two songs within the space of that time.”
However, when asked about a song he co-wrote for American rock band Starship, Taupin laughingly says: “Oh, please don’t go there!”
The song in question is the soft rock anthem We Built This City, which hit the No 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985.
In all the years since, We Built This City has been the butt of many jokes, and Taupin himself can certainly see the funny side of it.
He tells MOJO: “I wear it as a badge of honour that it was voted the Worst Song of All Time by several periodicals. At the same time, as I always say, people don’t understand that the original song was much different. But that song has paid the rent for many decades.”
The writing credits for We Built This City are shared by Taupin, English singer-songwriter Martin Page, American musician and producer Dennis Lambert and Austrian producer and arranger Peter Wolf.
And Taupin is not the only person embarrassed by their participation in this song.
In 2025, Starship singer Grace Slick talked to The Guardian about We Built This City, saying of Taupin’s lyrics: “I thought they were ridiculous.”
She added: “Stupid song. But our producer said, ‘Yeah, but it’s a hit.’ And he was right.”
Asked why she would sing material she disliked, Slick replied: “I kind of had to because I was trying to make it up to the band. I’d been this wild, crazy-ass drunk. So to make up for it I was sober all through the ’80s … which was a mistake!”
