Elton John Praises Young Pop Artists in a Celebration of 300th Episode of Rocket Hour

Luiza Dyjasek — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 08:30:11 +0000

Elton John Rocket Hour show reached 300 episodes. He spoke to Zane Lowe about how the show allowed him to hear new artists and fresh music to mark the occasion.
In a special Apple Music episode, Lowe shares messages from some of the artists that had a chance to be featured on Rocket Hour: Sam Fender, Channel Tres, Mike Kerr of Royal Blood, and Dua Lipa. They all expressed amazing gratitude towards Elton John and congratulating him on 300 episodes.
“I’ll never forget when you played ‘Levitating’ on Rocket Hour, I absolutely lost my mind,” said Dua Lipa. “I love how incredibly supportive you are of so many new artists and artists from all over the world and how much you champion and love and respect artists all over”.
Elton John commented on the show: “It’s brought me into contact with so many great new artists who’ve become friends. It’s kept me so up to date with what’s going on.”
“In fact, I think I look better now than I did six years ago when I started it. So it’s like, good music makes you look younger!” he added.
The musician expressed how highly inspirational are the young artists: “It’s wonderful because you think, ‘God, they’re 16 or 17 or 15 years of age. How do they do that?’ It keeps me animated and it keeps me so happy.”
He has placed Lorde among his favourite artists that he had a chance to hear through the show: “When I first heard the first thing I ever heard from Lorde, which was ‘Royals,’ I just thought it was unlike anything I’d ever heard before.”
“It just blew my mind. It was so simple and yet so moving. The same thing with Billie Eilish, it was like, when I hear her records, there’s nothing. The space and the feel of it” – he continues.

Episodes of Rocket Hour are available to listen to here.
You can watch the full interview with Elton John below.

Ben Howard Becomes Latest Guest on Elton John’s ’Rocket Hour’

Nila Sandhu — Sun, 09 May 2021 21:48:16 +0000

Ben Howard features on the latest episode of Elton John’s ‘Rocket Hour’ on Apple Music 1.

The British musician chats with the Rocket Man about his latest compilation ‘Collections From The Whiteout.’

Elton John asked in the interview when Howard wrote the songs from ‘Collections From The Whiteout,‘ “it’s, I think your third number one album in Britain, but it’s just a beautiful collection of songs. And I’m ignorant about how it came about. It says ‘Collections From The Whiteout’, were these songs written in lockdown and recorded in lockdown or before?”

The indie singer-songwriter responded, “No it predated lockdown, really. I was doing trips to upstate New York and getting in a studio up there, which is a trip in itself, that part of the world. But yeah, it kind of predated everything. Me and Aaron Dessner were just working on music together and yeah, obviously everything spiralled out of control after that. But yeah, we were just collecting a lot of different songs over probably 18 months.”

When asked by the British icon what the importance of the choice of producer was to the album’s compilation, Howard responded, “he’s just great at allowing you that freedom to explore strange ideas that perhaps you wouldn’t give the time of day yourself. He’s never scared of the muse and allowing it to be whatever and be quite free with the music until it’s time to track things I suppose. And then yeah, I think one key one was he turned my vocals up. I was getting lost in a deep world of reverbs for years. I think I was going further down that path and he dragged me back to somewhere audible.”

Ben Howard previously described his latest album to Apple Music, which was released last March, as “trying to find stories and tales that interlink with our own feelings and our own capacity,” He continued: “I’ve always felt I’ve been a little misguided in trying to explain the time that I live in, but you’re supposed to; you’re trying to explain yourself in these little moments.” The Richmond born artist announced the release of his album via a live stream from Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in Cornwall.

Elton John has had a star line-up for his ‘Rocket Hour’ so far, including British stars Olly Alexander, Yung Blood, RAY BLK and Jessie Ware. The series, which has been running for the past few years and has over 300 episodes, sees John interview a range of artists, play his favourite tunes and discuss the music industry past and present.

Howard is set to tour ‘Collections From The Whiteout’ this September and has recently been added to Cornwall’s Eden Sessions, among other UK artists McFly, Snow Patrol and The Script.

You can listen to Elton John’s interview with Ben Howard and other episodes of ‘Rocket Hour’ on Apple Music 1.

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Elton John Praises Young Pop Artists in a Celebration of 300th Episode of Rocket Hour

Ben Howard Becomes Latest Guest on Elton John’s ’Rocket Hour’