Reception
Recorded in the summer of 1974, during breaks between the sessions for Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, the song was at the time the only song Elton and Taupin ever consciously wrote as a single, as Elton told journalist Paul Gambaccini. Elton, looking to honour his friend, tennis professional Billie Jean King, asked Taupin to write a song called "Philadelphia Freedom," a homage to her tennis team. In His Song: The Musical History of Elton John, Elizabeth Rosenthal recounts that Taupin said, "I can't write a song about tennis," and did not. Taupin maintains that the lyrics bear no relation to tennis, Philly Soul or even flag-waving patriotism. Nonetheless, his words have been interpreted as patriotic and uplifting, and even though released in 1975, the song's sentiment, intended or not, meshed perfectly with an American music audience already gearing up for the country's bicentennial celebration in July of the next year. In the U.S. it was certified Gold in 1975 and then Platinum in 1995 by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Read more about this topic: Philadelphia Freedom (song)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)