"Tiny Dancer"

This song has undergone a bit of a renaissance in recent years, perhaps due to its climactic "appearance" in the film "Almost Famous", but almost certainly because millions of music fans have realised that, before he dove head-first into high camp and Liberace-like excess, Elton John really could pen a fantastic tune. He's not quite a singer-songwriter, given that the lyrics were almost always by Bernie Taupin, but he had a gift for finding the killer hook or the aching chorus. And lyrically, too, here's an aching chorus for you: "Hold me closer tiny dancer/Count the headlights on the highway/Lay me down on sheets of linen/You had a busy day today". Wonderful. Like Billy Joel, Elton John has/had a knack for writing a chorus so high and wide you could drive an 18-wheeler through it. There's an almost-hippy air to this song, as if he's chronicling something he remembers from a decade or so earlier, but at heart it's a song about the music business, touring, groupies. Which is probably why it was a shoo-in for the "Almost Famous" soundtrack.