Composition and Inspiration
The instrumental focus is on John's Leon Russell-influenced piano work, along with acoustic guitar, Paul Buckmaster's string accompaniment, and a shuffling rhythm section.
The lyrics express the romantic thoughts of an innocent. Taupin offers a straightforward love-song lyric at the beginning: "It's a little bit funny this feeling inside / I'm not one of those who can easily hide / I don't have much money but boy if I did / I'd buy a big house where we both could live." At times the self-deprecating narrator stumbles to get out his feelings, which despite being a melodramatic device, Allmusic calls "effective and sweet": "So excuse me forgetting but these things I do / You see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue / Anyway the thing is what I really mean / Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen / And you can tell everybody this is your song / It may be quite simple but now that it's done..."
The song was part of a stockpile of songs John and Taupin wrote while living together. John pinpoints his composition of the music to 27 October 1969. It took him only ten minutes. Taupin had penned the lyrics earlier that day over breakfast. John cites the song as one of his favourites, and plays it at most of his concerts. In an interview, he commented, "I don't think I have written a love song as good since".
"Your Song" was itself the inspiration for the song "We All Fall in Love Sometimes" on John's 1975 album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. The original framed handwritten lyric, complete with egg and coffee stains from breakfast, can be seen in the lyrics booklet that is included with various editions of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.
Elton John had said in an interview with The Actor's Studio that he had only taken 30 minutes to compose the entire song.
Read more about this topic: Your Song
Famous quotes containing the words composition and/or inspiration:
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—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)