Elton John says his new album is unlike anything he has made, and it came from losing his eyesight

Elton John says he has finished a new album that sounds unlike anything in his more than 30-album catalogue, and the change came at a brutal cost. Speaking at the Great Canadian Casino Resort in Toronto while accepting the Glenn Gould Prize, the singer said the record is “so different” from his past work and, by his own description, “so happy.”

The project began taking shape after John stepped back from touring in 2023, following the end of the Farewell Yellow Brick Road run, which stretched across more than 300 shows. It also comes after last year’s collaborative LP with Brandi Carlile, Who Believes In Angels?, which already suggested he was still interested in changing the terms of his late-career output rather than simply replaying the old highlights.

There is, however, a more sobering reason the new album sounds as if it was made under altered conditions. In 2024, John contracted a serious eye infection and later revealed that he had “only limited vision in one eye.” He told Variety that the impairment had been “devastating,” adding, “I lost my right eye and my left eye’s not so good, the last 15 months have been challenging for me because I haven’t been able to see anything, watch anything, read anything.”

That physical setback, by John’s own account, reshaped the way he works. Onstage in Toronto, he said the loss of sight forced him to abandon the process he had relied on for decades, writing songs by looking at lyrics first. “What my eye has given me is a chance of, at 80 years of age, completely reversing how I write,” he told the audience. “I’m writing melodies first, and lyrics coming second. I’ve never done that. And I’ve just done it.”

“And I’ve just done an album, which is so different to anything I’ve ever done before, but it’s so happy,” he said. “I’m so thrilled with it because it’s given me another chance to make music.

“If don’t listen to music, I’m dead. Music is my soul, my driving force. It is everything and has been everything to me all my life.”

The Glenn Gould Prize recognizes people who have made “a unique lifetime contribution that has enriched the human condition through the arts.” It comes with $100,000, and John donated the money back to the Glenn Gould Foundation.

He also used the ceremony, held over the weekend, to name “immaculate” singer Emily D’Angelo as the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize winner. In the same speech, he took aim at Donald Trump, saying, “It’s so nice to be in Canada and have a concert for Canadian artists, who all I know. It’s also nice to be in a country that has common sense,” before adding, “And I can tell you, it’s not the fucking 51st state, either. It’s a country that has accepted immigrants and does not throw them out. It’s a country that embraces all sorts of people, all races, and I love it.”

Though he has retired from large-scale touring, John has not exactly disappeared from public life. Last year he appeared with Brandi Carlile at a televised show at the London Palladium, then covered Brian Wilson’s “God Only Knows” at the 2025 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame ceremony. More recently, he was announced as the first headliner for Rock in Rio 2026, revealed that he turned his kneecaps into jewellery, and made a brief cameo in Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues.

He has also joined other artists in urging Keir Starmer to protect creative work from the rise of AI and the infringement of protected copyrighted material. The position fits neatly with the version of John that has been visible for years now: a veteran pop institution still looking outward, still protective of the ecosystem that made him, and still not quite willing to let the business flatten into nostalgia.

Back in 2021, John told NME that he had no interest in stopping his creative life, even if touring had become another matter. He said he had “never lost the desire to hear new music,” describing Rocket Hour, his Apple Music show, as a route into artists he might otherwise have missed because “Apple send me a lot of stuff.”

“However, I also scan the websites of the NME and places like that to find records that I wouldn’t have heard,” he added. “I’m always on the lookout for new things. I’ve become friends with most young artists on the record, and I just love promoting new records.”

At the time, he was already drawing a line between recording and the grind of the road. “I will do records and I’ll do my radio show, but as far as schlepping and doing shows? I’ve had enough applause. I wanna be with my family. I wanna be with my boys,” he said. “I’ll still be creative, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life flying here, flying there. I can’t do any more than I’ve done now and save for the odd charity thing that may come up, that’s it for me.”