The one singer Elton John said would be remembered forever: “The only real star”

Posted On November 27, 2025November 27, 2025

Elton John is one of the few artists who have been around long enough to see the greatest moments in music history.

While he had to go through a lot of turmoil to make it to the other side of mortality, he never forgot how lucky he was to be singing classic tunes for his fans and to be able to make friends with some of the biggest names in rock and roll history. But even though the typical idea of a rockstar has blown away, John knows that there’s still room for people to become icons along the way.

With the advent of the internet, though, the idea of a rockstar looks a lot different from what it was back in the day. Usually, a band like Led Zeppelin could pride themselves on having a certain mystique whenever they performed by keeping everything private, but now that every single person on Earth has a phone in their hands, stars need to go the extra mile to make something that will truly make people’s jaws drop.

That’s not to say that there weren’t people like that back in the day, either. As much as he might feel timestamped in the 1970s, David Bowie would have been able to absolutely dominate had he debuted in the modern age, always focusing on his image and trying to build up his own characters whenever he started making new albums. The visuals were everything to him, and it’s not like John wasn’t paying attention, either.

No one went up onstage in his lavish stage garbs with the hope of not being noticed, and when looking at the glamorous icons that came after, they were almost trying to spit in the face of the average rock stars in jeans and T-shirts, looking at their shoes whenever they performed. And while the 2000s started giving us sensitive songwriters like Keane, John Mayer, and James Blunt, having someone like Lady Gaga set the world on fire in 2009 was exactly what people needed.

She was clearly a pop star in the same way that Madonna was back in the day, but what Gaga did for her music was about more than making great tunes. She had a firm grip on songwriting, but looking at every one of her records, she wanted to make musical worlds half the time. It may not have always worked out for the best, but John was convinced that she was the closest thing to a real star that the modern age had.

When talking about the current state of music, John felt that what Gaga was doing was bound to go down in history with the true greats, saying in 2019, “The only real star at the moment is Lady Gaga. She could have a career like Barbra Streisand if she wanted to. She’s got the ambition, she’s got the talent coming out of every pore of her body, so it’s up to her whether she wants it, and I think she does want it.”

Then again, there are still people who are willing to bring certain aesthetics into the mainstream that no one had heard before. While it’s far too close to call, someone like Billie Eilish has the same kind of power whenever she sings, and even though her music can be a bit divisive, you can tell that the care that she puts into her craft was as important as any of the true stars that were coming out decades before.

So while John was painting a more dire picture of what the modern age of stars looks like, Gaga is one of the next phase of stars that want to be remembered long after they’ve sung their final note. Some have tried to do that through their lavish stage shows or mouthing off in interviews, but someone like Gaga could get the same kind of reaction purely through the songs she created.

Related Topics