Sharing a thing I wrote to our group chat: I think this album is predominantly about three things- being famous, yearning for adolescence, and being gay. I also think those three things are wrapped up together. The Oz imagery underlines these themes- Oz itself can be fame. Hollywood (used here as a blanket term for the world famous artists walk in) is famously a strange and wondrous place that hides danger and darkness within, particularly if you're a young boy coming from council housing in a suburb of London. Wizard of Oz, at this time, has also already become a symbol of nostalgia for a bygone era. Hollywood (the movie industry this time) is transitioning to the auteur driven "New Hollywood" and movies that are nowhere near as innocent as Oz are being released. Though with Candle in the Wind, Elton and Taupin are reminding us that all the wonder that came through on the screen was obtained at a terrible cost. At the same time, songs like Your Sister Can't Twist and Saturday Night's Alright are songs sung from a teenage perspective, talking about how great being young is, but barely masking the rot and danger of the world the youth run in. Friend of Dorothy was a slang term for gay men and was a well known term among the LGBT crowd at this time. So just by using Oz imagery, Elton is giving a very obvious wink (also keeping in mind he was still publicly in the closet). And while a song about Judy Garland would have been the most obvious nod, a song about Marilyn Monroe and how the boy in the 22nd row admired her in an unsexual way is the next best thing. The song All the Young Girls Love Alice is also notable through this lens because it's a song about a young straight woman being prostituted (literally) out to lesbians sung by a young gay man being prostituted (metaphorically) out to straight people. So in a way, the songs about childhood reveal an absurdity about where Elton is at this time- he's allowed to sing outright about teenage violence and banging underage girls, but his true sexuality can only be nodded at. Jamaican Jerk-Off is the only song I won't bother defending, shit is lame ass white people reggae. Would have been more at home on a Jimmy Buffett album Bad reggae notwithstanding, this is still a 4.5 album for me, giving it a 5 here.