{"id":805840,"date":"2020-03-30T09:54:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T15:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=975144"},"modified":"2020-03-30T09:54:25","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T15:54:25","slug":"elton-johns-living-room-concert-corona-you-feel-the-love-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/elton-johns-living-room-concert-corona-you-feel-the-love-tonight\/","title":{"rendered":"Elton John\u2019s Living Room Concert: Corona You Feel The Love Tonight?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cHere we are, all together at home,\u201d Elton John<\/a> announced cheerily at the start of his star-studded Living Room Concert for America on Sunday night. \u201cAnd since we\u2019re all hunkered down together, we thought we\u2019d put together a little show for you, from our homes to yours.\u201d It was a moment only Elton could get away with \u2014 Captain Fantastic, the glitziest of rocket men, sitting in his fascinatingly ordinary kitchen, looking like any other tired dad, bored from too much social distancing and desperate for a little human connection (not to mention the soothing power of music at a time of mass anxiety). Elton even complained, \u201cI happen to be quarantined in the only house I\u2019ve ever been in without a piano.\u201d<\/p>\n

The benefit special featured Alicia Keys, Dave Grohl<\/a>, Billie Eilish<\/a>, Shawn Mendes<\/a>, Camilla Cabello and other stars, raising funds for coronavirus<\/a> relief by singing in homemade videos from their quarantine zones all over the country. As Elton said, \u201cOur concerns are a mile high, but we hope this bit of entertainment can feed and fuel your soul, and maybe bring you some strength and a touch of joy to prepare for the days to come.\u201d By the end of the show, he\u2019d swiped his kid\u2019s keyboard in time to do an all-too-brief snippet of \u201cDon\u2019t Let The Sun Go Down On Me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The charm of the show was its amateurish just-winging-it quality. None of the stars looked or sounded their best \u2014 that was the point. Instead, it was touching to see them suffer from relatable \u201cI look like crap on Zoom\u201d anxiety. Tim McGraw covering his head in a ski cap. Lady Gaga hiding behind shades in sweatpants and a ponytail. Billie Eilish doing \u201cBad Guy\u201d with her brother Finneas on a basement rec-room couch, looking exactly like a couple of surly teen siblings sick of being cooped up together. Stars \u2014 they\u2019re just like us!<\/p>\n

Inevitably, it became a show about seeing where these people were trapped \u2014 the quarantine equivalent of real-estate porn. The Backstreet Boys sang \u201cI Want It That Way\u201d from their five different houses \u2014 Brian Littrell has the most Backstreet-tastic of pads, with that gigantic chandelier and a couch full of impressively fluffy throw pillows. Kevin Richardson (always the coolest Boy, don\u2019t @ me) got his kids into the act \u2014 one played drums, one played guitar, both wore BSB T-shirts. It made quite a contrast with Dave Grohl, who sang a touching acoustic \u201cMy Hero\u201d in a dreary white cell that looked like an authentically claustrophobic dad-cave hideout. McGraw sang his 1999 country hit \u201cSomething Like That\u201d from the diving board of his swimming pool.<\/p>\n

Camila Cabello<\/a> and Shawn Mendes, lovebirds quarantined together in Miami, did \u201cMy Oh My\u201d as she read the lyrics off her phone. Billie and Finneas sounded fantastic \u2014 a year to the day after her album was released \u2014 next to a shelf full of vinyl; it would have been a blast to see them flip through their parents\u2019 records and make fun of them. (Maybe next time?) Billie Joe Armstrong sang \u201cBoulevard of Broken Dreams,\u201d wearing beads that rattled so loud they almost drowned out his guitar \u2014 a cute down-home touch, especially when his dog jumped up to join him. When Alicia Keys began rambling on her purple piano, oddsmakers put the over\/under at 14 minutes, but she managed to keep \u201cUnderdog\u201d to single digits.<\/p>\n

As the night began, the MVP was Gal Gadot \u2014 she wan\u2019t on the show, but she took the initiative last week in neutralizing the \u201cImagine\u201d menace, always a threat during a time of global crisis. After Gal\u2019s celebrity \u201cImagine\u201d sing-along went viral, it looked like she\u2019d done us all a huge public service by ensuring nobody would try tackling \u201cImagine\u201d again for a while. (Natalie Portman singing \u201cnothing to kill or die for\u201d alone should be enough to inspire anyone to keep a six-feet distance.) However, a team of doctors sang it, and if the docs want to sing it during a pandemic, you better let them. Nice try, Gal.<\/p>\n

Many of the performers didn\u2019t perform\u2014 L ady Gaga and Lizzo declined to sing at all, though Elton tried to tempt Lizzo with his rendition of \u201cJuice.\u201d Sam Smith, Ellen DeGeneres, Demi Lovato, and H.E.R. appeared as well. Nobody got too heavy, not with the news getting worse by the hour; right before the broadcast, reports broke about the great country star Joe Diffie\u2019s death alongside John Prine\u2019s hospitalization. During the show, Joan Baez posted a homemade tribute video singing Prine\u2019s \u201cHello in There\u201d that instantly went viral \u2014 nothing in the concert went for that kind of raw, spontaneous emotion. This was a lighter, cozier affair. As if to remind everyone this was on Fox, Elton spread some dangerous social-media misinformation about dolphins (no, this is not \u201ca message from the universe\u201d) but made up for it with a personal and poignant speech about another disastrous pandemic, the AIDS crisis.<\/p>\n

Mariah Carey<\/a> ended up stealing the show, coming in at the end to deliver a badly needed blast of diva glitz. It wouldn\u2019t be like Mariah to dress down even for a stay-home PSA like this \u2014 she showed up with all her *Glitter<\/em>* mentality raging, with her piano player and back-up singers on their own screens. She had the excellent taste to stay the hell away from \u201cHero\u201d and instead go for \u201cAlways Be My Baby,\u201d easily the most moving performance of the night, with the exact right dose of pop uplift. She gave it the Full Mariah treatment, goosing the end with falsetto trills, before signing off with a reminder that she wears gloves even in her own house, and the words, \u201cStay happy. Stay blessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe Elton can make this a weekly event, live from his kitchen counter, for as long as the quarantine lasts. And maybe he can invite Mariah back for more.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHere we are, all together at home,\u201d Elton John announced cheerily at the start of his star-studded Living Room Concert for America on Sunday night. \u201cAnd since we\u2019re all hunkered down together, we thought we\u2019d put together a little show for you, from our homes to yours.\u201d It was a moment only Elton could get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-17 21:41:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}