Who Believes In Angels?

Neither John nor Carlile overshadow the other – when one’s on lead, the other is always ready to back up with some harmonies. They really do work extraordinarily well together. As you would expect, the sound is very much middle of the road. .... It also means there’s a warm familiarity to many of the songs.

The album's direct confrontation with ageing and death serves to intensify these artists' joyful, companionable celebration of life. Outsized, old-school, dad-rockin' fun.

Who Believes in Angels?, however, feels like a genuine meeting of minds. Created alongside American country rock royalty Brandi Carlile, an 11-times Grammy winner, there is the audible sense of two artists pushing each other and raising the other’s game.

This is equally Carlile’s record, her majestic vocals and distinct edges complementing his. We’re hoping this won’t be Elton John’s final record but it’s certainly one of his strongest collections in years, bookending a musical legacy unlike any other.

A career highlight for Carlile and a rejuvenation for John. [Apr 2025, p.79]

An album that's found the singer engaged again, hungry to work and with a keen eye on quality control, given a creative kickstart by a younger talent whose reverence is tangible but never submissive. [Apr 2025, p.98]

With swinging jams like “Little Richard’s Bible” and theatrical pop belters like the title track, the duo reach high and confidently grab hold of their target stars.

These two songs ["The Rose of Laura Nyro" and "Never Too Late"] don't ruin the album, though, and no doubt fans of both artists will embrace this project as a great idea that, for the most part, works really well. A little more restraint and a little more Elton taking the lead vocals, and the "most part" could have been stricken from that sentence.

They happily evoke the classic albums of his mid-1970s golden age, adding a reflective element that makes familiar gestures feel uniquely meaningful.