Elton John

★★★★

The Lockdown Sessions

EMI UNIVERSAL. CD/DL/LP/MC

Ten new and six recent collaborations provide an impish delight.

Never likely to sit twiddling his thumbs when his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour halted, Elton John ignored an album’s worth of new Bernie Taupin lyrics to work from home, collaborating with wildly diverse artists, from the Stevies (Wonder and Nicks) to Miley Cyrus and Lil Nas X. The result is probably his most varied album. There’s the walloping ballad After All with John’s Los Angeles neighbour Charlie Puth; there’s E-Ticket, where John and Eddie Vedder rock out to evoke Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting), and there’s a deliriously unhinged take on It’s A Sin with Years & Years, which begins in Ally McBeal fashion, before