Speaker 1: I love February for so many reasons. Firstly because sunset
Speaker 1: happens after five o'clock, Secondly because it's the month of love,
Speaker 1: sweet love, and thirdly, well because it's my birthday month. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm not really that excited about the number I'm
Speaker 1: celebrating these days, but the fact that I'm still able
Speaker 1: to celebrate is amazing this year. Call it a Valentine's
Speaker 1: gift or a Birthday gift, whatever you like, but a
Speaker 1: dynamic duo by the names of Sir Elton John and
Speaker 1: Brandy Carlyle have just wrapped up a beautiful new project
Speaker 1: and presented it to the world. Brandy Carlyle is an
Speaker 1: eleven time Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, performer and producer,
Speaker 1: a two time Emmy Award winning composer, lyricist and writer,
Speaker 1: a number one New York Times bestselling author, and an
Speaker 1: activist who's known as one of music's most respected voices.
Speaker 1: She just received her first OSCAR nomination in the Original
Speaker 1: Song category for Never Too Late, a track written alongside
Speaker 1: Elton John, Bernie Toppen, and Andrew Watt for the Disney
Speaker 1: Plus documentary of the same name. On Elton's life and career.
Speaker 1: Sir Elton John's career achievements to date are unsurpassed. He's
Speaker 1: one of the top selling solo artists of all time
Speaker 1: in the US and the UK charts alone. He has
Speaker 1: over eighty five top forty hits, and he sold more
Speaker 1: than three hundred million records worldwide. Among his many awards
Speaker 1: and honors are six Grammys, a tony two Oscars, induction
Speaker 1: into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the
Speaker 1: Songwriters Hall of Fame, a Kennedy Center Honor, and a
Speaker 1: Knighthood from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I for sir vises
Speaker 1: to music and charitable services. In January of twenty four,
Speaker 1: Elton joined Hollywood's elite group of Egott winners after securing
Speaker 1: his first ever Emmy Award for his historic Disney Plus
Speaker 1: Live concert special Elton John Live Farewell from Dodger Stadium.
Speaker 1: Last week, Elton and Brandy announced details of their exciting
Speaker 1: new collaborative studio album, Who Believes In Angels, set for
Speaker 1: release on April fourth, while also unveiling the new single
Speaker 1: from the album, the title cut, Who Believes In Angels.
Speaker 1: The album's concept was devised by Elton and Brandy, as
Speaker 1: well as multiple Grammy Award winning producer and songwriter Andrew Watt.
Speaker 1: It's a genuinely collaborative studio album Elton led and Brandy
Speaker 1: led songs, with long term collaborator Bernie Toppin and Brandy
Speaker 1: contributing lyrics, and producer and co writer Andrew acting as
Speaker 1: the producer, the mediator, the creative conduit. It was written
Speaker 1: and recorded completely from scratch in just twenty days, and
Speaker 1: it's the first time Elton has allowed cameras to film
Speaker 1: his writing and recording sessions, ultimately documenting the entire process,
Speaker 1: the breakdowns, the breakthroughs, the tears, the torn up lyrics,
Speaker 1: sheets and all. And guess what, they dropped in to
Speaker 1: chat with us about it and are letting me share
Speaker 1: the single with everyone listening. We'll catch up with Sir
Speaker 1: Elton and Brandy right after I catch you up on
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Speaker 1: Hazel Cream and Love twenty four. Hi Elton, Hi Brandy,
Speaker 1: what an honor. Thank you so much. I am so
Speaker 1: blessed and flattered and what an opportunity and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to jump into this. Twenty nineteen, I brought like
Speaker 1: half my family to the Tacomadome and we got to
Speaker 1: go backstage to meet you. And I had ordered Elton
Speaker 1: John glasses for all of us before the show, and
Speaker 1: so here we are in the green room and in walks,
Speaker 1: Brandy and your family, and I got to experience, like
Speaker 1: a fly on the wall, the most beautiful exchange of
Speaker 1: energy when I saw you to embrace.
Speaker 2: Yep, it was magical. It was magical. The first time
Speaker 2: we ever met was in Las Vegas, when Brandy came
Speaker 2: to Vegas and she'd asked me if i'd write play
Speaker 2: on a song, and I said, of course, if you
Speaker 2: can come to Vegas because I was there in residency.
Speaker 2: So she did, and before we even started recording, there
Speaker 2: was a magic that it was like we'd been friends
Speaker 2: all our life. That that happens sometimes when you meet people.
Speaker 2: She has been a friend since then, and the friendship
Speaker 2: has grown and grown and our family spent time together,
Speaker 2: and now we've made music together. She's a here with
Speaker 2: me on stage. I've appeared with her at Joney Jams,
Speaker 2: the Johnny Mitchell concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Yeah, she's
Speaker 2: a very very important part of our life, and so
Speaker 2: is her family, and we go on holiday together. In fact,
Speaker 2: never too late the song for the Oscars, Brandy watched
Speaker 2: a kind of rough cut of the documentary A Nice
Speaker 2: and then started to write this song, and it became
Speaker 2: the song that eventually happened on the album. But yeah,
Speaker 2: she was responsible for that, and it's been an amazing
Speaker 2: friendship and it's so glad we got to make a
Speaker 2: record together. I've always wanted to make a record together
Speaker 2: for the last five years, and this was the ideal
Speaker 2: time to do it, after the tour finished.
Speaker 1: Seeing the two of you together and getting to experience
Speaker 1: that if I could paint it, it would be like
Speaker 1: these intense colors coming together and swirling and blending and
Speaker 1: making a whole new color. And now to see you
Speaker 1: guys doing the song, doing the album, I can't believe
Speaker 1: I got to be there to see it, and now
Speaker 1: I get to talk to you about it.
Speaker 2: So we're so throwed with the album. We wrote it
Speaker 2: and recorded it within three weeks, and the electricity was
Speaker 2: flying in that studio because of her, because of Bernie talking,
Speaker 2: because of Andrew what the producer. I've never worked with
Speaker 2: four people on a project before, and it was just
Speaker 2: so intense and so justifiable. It was amazing.
Speaker 1: Brandy. I got to watch. They sent me a little
Speaker 1: sneak peek of the making of the album. It's just
Speaker 1: a little screener they sent me, and you looked Brandy.
Speaker 1: First off, you look like a teenager. Just your body
Speaker 1: energy and the way you were setting and the way
Speaker 1: you were becoming one with the music. You looked ageless.
Speaker 1: I mean you both did. But I kept looking at
Speaker 1: you like squinting at the screen, going Okay, this isn't ai.
Speaker 1: I know this is real. But your energy was so
Speaker 1: pure and so young and youthful, and the music is
Speaker 1: so young and fun.
Speaker 2: Wow, thank you.
Speaker 3: I would definitely say my teenage self was writing Shotgun
Speaker 3: that whole process, and I was just really I just
Speaker 3: let it happen. I let myself go back to being thirteen,
Speaker 3: fourteen years old because I was going back to school.
Speaker 3: I was ready to go to school and unknow everything
Speaker 3: I knew and really be open to anything that could happen.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: She has the energy of a teenager, and so do I.
Speaker 2: But inside that energy on this album was a grumpy
Speaker 2: old man.
Speaker 5: No and e start.
Speaker 2: I was grumpy and it's delight it. It's all filmed.
Speaker 2: The whole writing process, the whole recording process has been
Speaker 2: filmed by nine cameras and so eventually you'll get to
Speaker 2: see what it was like. But I was tired and
Speaker 2: I had self doubt, incredible self doubt, and Brandy, Bernie
Speaker 2: and Andrew pushed me through the process, pushed me to
Speaker 2: the other side. And when I got to the other
Speaker 2: side and felt their love and energy, the album just flew.
Speaker 2: I mean it just flew. And it was one of
Speaker 2: the greatest artistic processes that I've been involved with from
Speaker 2: an artist point of view, because she was so great
Speaker 2: to me, and she just she put up with me.
Speaker 2: She was very measured, she knew how to get around me.
Speaker 2: She was just so great, and the process started off
Speaker 2: very shakily and ended up just off the charts. It's
Speaker 2: like we were in another planet.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: experience the whole thing I got to hear. They sent
Speaker 1: me the title kuit and I listened to it Who
Speaker 1: Believes In Angels, and then I listened to it again,
Speaker 1: and then I had to listen to it again because
Speaker 1: there's so much going on. It's like kind of like
Speaker 1: like biting into something and it just there's just more
Speaker 1: and more and more and more to it.
Speaker 3: Well it makes sense, I mean, Who Believes In Angels
Speaker 3: is fascinating track because all the other songs that are
Speaker 3: on the album are about these kind of things that
Speaker 3: are swirling around in mine, in Elton's life. You have
Speaker 3: Elton's love in Laura Nero and how there's crossover and
Speaker 3: how him and I work together because of that kind
Speaker 3: of understanding. Then there's Little Richard and the influence that's
Speaker 3: had on Elden's life. And then you've got Swing for
Speaker 3: the Fences, which is an anthem for young people.
Speaker 2: But by the and you get a.
Speaker 3: Little Light, which is about current events. But by the
Speaker 3: time you get to Who Believes In Angels, you're hearing
Speaker 3: a song about our experience together in that studio and
Speaker 3: how really mystical it is that we ever even met
Speaker 3: each other, that it ever even happened, And so you're
Speaker 3: hearing a song that really encompasses what the album is,
Speaker 3: you know, And you've got this Eldon John chorus that
Speaker 3: just hits like a freight train, and it's just an
Speaker 3: undeniably Elton John chorus, you know, from the moment you
Speaker 3: hear the first few piano notes exactly who is about
Speaker 3: to come in and sing that song? And then you
Speaker 3: hear my voice instead, so it's jarring, and then Elton
Speaker 3: John comes in and it makes sense. So that song
Speaker 3: is just it sums up the whole album musically and lyrically.
Speaker 5: Don't need to so hard. You don't have to wear
Speaker 5: a time.
Speaker 3: Sometimes, honest, it's being calm inside a live.
Speaker 5: Not Then I then I loved? And what I still choose? You?
Speaker 4: What I fall on the same A rodeo queen breathing,
Speaker 4: faring to the lie I have been?
Speaker 6: Then I'm what do you say? We said?
Speaker 7: The plan and trees aside? Even the diamonds look like
Speaker 7: rocks to the untrained eye.
Speaker 6: What is it cost to buy a soul?
Speaker 5: Bad? When you die?
Speaker 8: What are the angels gonna do with the humans?
Speaker 6: Is baytral Bree who real.
Speaker 5: Color of the lies?
Speaker 7: Why I would die on that hill in a long
Speaker 7: handed back.
Speaker 8: If you're not swinging first, you will never rid ride.
Speaker 5: I've been man, husband, What do you say? Was that?
Speaker 6: The pleasant trees aside?
Speaker 9: Even the diamonds lot fling loss to the US trained eye,
Speaker 9: what is the costo five soul?
Speaker 8: But when you died, what are the visions can do best?
Speaker 6: Pleasant Ris Gonna uses the.
Speaker 5: Span.
Speaker 8: There's no need to coach the stars about before you
Speaker 8: bark when you need.
Speaker 2: Someone to walk with in the darn.
Speaker 10: I've been there, I've done there. I've been there, I've
Speaker 10: been I've been there.
Speaker 5: O love, I've been there.
Speaker 2: And also to like the whole album is us together
Speaker 2: singing not one line she takes another line that with
Speaker 2: harmony the whole way. And that's what I wanted if
Speaker 2: I was going to recall. I wanted her voices so
Speaker 2: special that I wanted to harmonize. She does most of
Speaker 2: the lead lead lines. I harmonize a lot, which I
Speaker 2: don't usually do, but it was so her voices together
Speaker 2: goes so beautifully, and it was a real challenge to
Speaker 2: harmonize to her voice because it's so pure, and so
Speaker 2: it was. But the whole album is just like these
Speaker 2: two people coming together and really making something together, really
Speaker 2: beautifully and close together. The harmonies, the songs, the playing,
Speaker 2: and it really exceeded all my expectations. It was difficult.
Speaker 2: It was difficult to do because she phrases differently from
Speaker 2: most people. When someone does a vocal and you have
Speaker 2: to put the harmony on it, it's very difficult because
Speaker 2: I phrase one way, she phrases another. And I think
Speaker 2: there's one great scene in the film that you'll probably
Speaker 2: see eventually where I get the lyrics and I just
Speaker 2: tear them up and I say, I can't see these
Speaker 2: bloody songs.
Speaker 3: It throws them on the ground, and he goes, I'm
Speaker 3: going to do another take and.
Speaker 2: Goes and we had to steal them back together and
Speaker 2: he goes, give me another one. Andrew goes, Helton, you're
Speaker 2: so impatient. Yeah, I know. It was just frustration of
Speaker 2: trying to be as good as she was.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 11: Yeah, but when he says, I don't phrase normal, but
Speaker 11: I phrase like him in the nineties, Like when I
Speaker 11: hear back to my phrasing, it's it's.
Speaker 3: The one made in England, big big picture, lion King.
Speaker 3: That's my phrasing. That's when I learned to sing. So
Speaker 3: there are moments like in Never Too Late, where.
Speaker 2: I go don't let it crossing your mind, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: that is so Elton. It's uncanny actually times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who believes in angels?
Speaker 5: Oh?
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Speaker 1: Mercyships dot Org. Brandy, how old were you when you
Speaker 1: first fell in love with Elton eleven eleven?
Speaker 2: Fifth grade?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And by the time I was in seventh grade,
Speaker 3: there wasn't a piece of my wall that didn't have
Speaker 3: an Elton jumposter or clipping.
Speaker 2: And that was the nineties. It wasn't the seventies.
Speaker 5: It wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was like I knew.
Speaker 3: I was just like I read the lyrics of Skyline Pigeon.
Speaker 3: I had heard the music and I was a huge fan.
Speaker 3: I went to the maiden England tour that to Come
Speaker 3: at Home, where you played Come Down in Time, which.
Speaker 2: Blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I was there, I was there, the radio station I
Speaker 1: was on back then, I think sponsored that. You know,
Speaker 1: Brian got to go on stage with you.
Speaker 5: I didn't.
Speaker 1: The Morning Guy did.
Speaker 2: But I actually think Brandy fell in love with the
Speaker 2: lyrics before she fell in love with the melody, because
Speaker 2: Bernie's lyrics and I've just been listening to some old
Speaker 2: stuff of ours were just quite incredibly from a baby,
Speaker 2: he said. I spoke to him last night and I said, God,
Speaker 2: I've just listened to this old stuff and he said,
Speaker 2: I was a baby. I was eighteen. I was nineteen
Speaker 2: to write these kind of lyrics, and I think, to
Speaker 2: be honest with you, the things went together, but I
Speaker 2: think the lyrics. You're a great lyric writer because of Bernie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the reason I do it.
Speaker 3: It was true that the the first first existence of
Speaker 3: else And I ever saw was I heard of his
Speaker 3: kindness in a book report and then I read the
Speaker 3: lyric to Skyline Pigeon, and I was already a fan
Speaker 3: before i'd ever even heard him sing. So when I
Speaker 3: heard that song and it all came together for me,
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, okay, I'm a singer songwriter now.
Speaker 1: And you were a kid, but you knew as a
Speaker 1: little kid, but I super knew it was destined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was destined. It's kiss me, It's fate. And
Speaker 2: that's happened to me so many times my life. Meeting Bernie,
Speaker 2: meeting Brandy, meeting David, my husband, meeting Andrew Whattt, the producer.
Speaker 2: So many people have come into my life unexpectedly, but
Speaker 2: they stayed in my life forever.
Speaker 1: I know we don't have much time, but I have
Speaker 1: to say, just watching the little clip that I got
Speaker 1: to see, I can't wait to eat the whole meal,
Speaker 1: to see the whole thing. But Andrew, what a force
Speaker 1: to be reckoned with.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yeah, he is something else. He's like,
Speaker 2: I've never been in the studio with such an electric,
Speaker 2: fine person who just pushes and pushes and is so
Speaker 2: musical and understands exactly what's going on. He's extraordinary, extra extraordinary. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's just just a wall of charisma.
Speaker 3: You can't get through it. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I was waiting for him to just
Speaker 1: drop his human body. He's so electric energy like and
Speaker 1: just be a flash of light or something. Because through
Speaker 1: that little clip they sent me, he is nothing but
Speaker 1: pure fun energy bouncing between you two.
Speaker 2: Oh, and he loves Elton. He loves Elton.
Speaker 3: All we do when we get together, me and Andrew
Speaker 3: is talk about Elton.
Speaker 2: I speak to Andrew every day. He's so in my
Speaker 2: life and I listen to all the things he does,
Speaker 2: the Stones, Gaga, Pearl Jam, Iggy Pop, and I just
Speaker 2: love him. And then he's just there's not a day
Speaker 2: goes by why I don't speak to him unless he's traveling.
Speaker 10: Well.
Speaker 1: We are anxiously awaiting the new album. Thank you for
Speaker 1: spending time with us. I can't wait to see the movie.
Speaker 1: And I cannot tell you too how much I respect
Speaker 1: and admire and appreciate. There's no words.
Speaker 2: There's no words, Heylina. When you hear the album, will
Speaker 2: you let me know what you think of it?
Speaker 1: I promise I will.
Speaker 2: I promise I really value that.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right, Love you guys, I.
Speaker 2: Love you too. Thank you for your time. Thank you
Speaker 2: bid Elia by Honni.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I was fortunate enough to get a
Speaker 1: few minutes with these two icons. Made my heart go
Speaker 1: pitter pat for sure? Who believes in Angels? The single
Speaker 1: is out now, download it, listen to it, love it,
Speaker 1: and get ready for the full album coming in April.
Speaker 1: It is going to be amazing. Here's what's been said
Speaker 1: about it. It's an album as unexpect as it is triumphant.
Speaker 1: Elton sounds utterly revitalized. Brandy sounds like a singer songwriter
Speaker 1: at the absolute top of her game, her voice melding
Speaker 1: with Elton's like a hand in a glove. The resulting
Speaker 1: songs somehow manage unequivocally the work of Elton John and
Speaker 1: Brandy Carlisle, while sounding unlike any album either has ever
Speaker 1: made before. I love these two artists so much. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to hear the whole volume, all ten tracks
Speaker 1: of what they've cooked up together. You can pre order
Speaker 1: the album who Believes in Angels dot com. Consider it
Speaker 1: a love letter to yourself. I hope you feel loved
Speaker 1: and cherish this February fourteenth single No Problem by the Flowers.
Speaker 1: Soak in a bubble bath, eat the chocolates. You are
Speaker 1: worth it. But either before or after, drop a little
Speaker 1: note into a neighbor's box, or the postal carrier or
Speaker 1: a bestie. Give them a flower, a coffee card, a
Speaker 1: box of conversation hearts. Whatever love you give will come
Speaker 1: back to you tenfold. I promise. Happy Valentine's Day, my loves,
Speaker 1: get out there and love someone