Yola – “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (Elton John Cover)

Alysse Gafkjen

Yola – “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (Elton John Cover)

Alysse Gafkjen

Earlier this year, the British country-soul singer Yola released Walk Through Fire, her Dan Auerbach-produced debut album. That LP impressed a whole lot of people, proved a slow-burn success, and scored Yola a surprise Grammy nomination in the Best New Artist category. Today, there’s a new deluxe edition of Walk Through Fire hitting streaming services, and it’s got a bonus-track cover of one of Elton John’s greatest ballads.

In that bonus edition, Yola takes on Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” a song deeply inscribed on our cultural DNA. Yola doesn’t exactly take the song anyplace new, but how could you possibly do that? We all know the original too well for that. Instead, she just sings the hell out of it. Listen below.

Elton John himself was into the cover enough to debut it on his Twitter feed.

In a statement, Yola has this to say:

Can’t believe it has only been a year since we announced Walk Through Fire, working with Dan Auerbach and the team has been an absolute dream and so proud of everything we have achieved. So many great songs from that session didn’t make the final cut, including “I Don’t Wanna Lie.” I’m a HUGE Elton fan and we’ve been playing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on the tour and wanted to cut a version for this release which Dan also produced! And then for Elton to personally premiere it, well that is the icing on the cake!

The deluxe edition of Walk Through Fire is out now on Easy Eye Sound. Read our interview with Yola here.

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