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Elton John to give open-air concert at Tivoli

Copenhagen amusement park Tivoli will have more than roller coasters on offer when pop icon Elton John and his band take the stage on July 6th.

Published: 30 January 2015 11:25 CET

There will be a hit parade of epic dimensions at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens this summer when the ‘Rocket Man’ himself, Elton John, gives an open-air concert at the historic amusement park.

The British singer – best known for hits like 'Candle in the Wind', 'Your Song' and 'I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues' – will perform at Tivoli on Monday, July 6th.

“Elton John has sung his way into the hearts of generations of music fans [and] is a member of the absolute top of international pop icons,” Tivoli’s programme director Rune Erbs Ledet said in a press release.

Over the course of his nearly five-decade career, Sir Elton has sold 250 million records and performed more than 3,500 concerts in 80 countries. His last Danish appearance was a sold-out show at Copenhagen’s Forum last year.

Tickets for the Elton John concert go on sale Monday at 10am. They will set you back 480 kroner, but include full admission to Tivoli. Regular admission to Tivoli will get you into the amusement park where you might still be able to hear the show but not enter the closed-off concert area.

Two days after the Elton John concert, Tony Bennet and Lady Gaga will take the same stage. Tickets for that concert are already on sale.

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New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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