Sleeping with the Past calls back to the R&B of the 60s and 70s. While preparing to write the album, Bernie Taupin and Elton John decided they wanted to create an album with a coherent theme and they were inspired by Billy Joel’s 1983 album An Innocent Man, which similarly calls back to earlier decades. The album’s title is obvious, then. It was also the first album John recorded completely sober, though he would take a few more years to become permanently sober.
I think the album’s theme is a big strength. After so many albums (Sleeping with the Past is John’s twenty-second), frankly you kind of need a really good excuse to make any more. And this is a good one.
The album has two really good songs (though the others aren’t at all bad), which are Healing Hands and Sacrifice. The latter is the main thing this album is remembered for, which I think is a bit of a shame, because the album is more than just one famous track, but Sacrifice is one of its best tracks.
But I still like a number of the other tracks, the album’s title track is pretty good, as are Club at the End of the Street and I Never Knew Her Name. My favourite song on the album is definitely Healing Hands.
Sleeping with the Past is the first Elton John album I properly enjoyed listening to in a while. Sadly, this is more of a bad word about the other albums than it is a good word about Sleeping with the Past, but I definitely like it. The album’s theme gives it a good grounding, but the album doesn’t simply steal from earlier genres, it uses them as a starting point and comes up with something interesting of its own. 3½ stars.