“I can’t tell you how good it feels to have a hit single at 75,” says Elton John, as his famous grin flashes at the stadium crowd gathered for his last ever shows in Sydney. He’s in the midst of his final tour of Australia, in the city that has long been his home away from home, going back to the 1980s.
“Hit single” might be somewhat underselling the globe-conquering ubiquitousness of Cold Heart, a reimagining of several of his classic songs seamlessly combined into a wholly unreasonable banger by Australian producers Pnau, who get a shout-out from the stage. “Things are really good in my life,” he says from where he is seated at the piano, playfully conducting everyone’s dancing in a manner that can only be described as adorable. This is the start of the final encore, and he is wearing a diamante-embroidered kimono over a tracksuit bearing his name. Elton John can, does and always has done exactly what he wants; and if you think that time may have even slightly wearied him, you would be very, very wrong.
