“Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting” by Elton John

"Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" was the first single from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John's best-selling 1973 album, and it's the moment the piano man rolls up his sleeves and goes looking for a brawl. Bernie Taupin wrote the words, Elton wrote the music, and the band plays it like a bar fight set to a boogie.

Davey Johnstone's electric guitar does the heavy swinging, Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson pound the floor flat, and Elton hammers the keys and hollers over the top, with Gus Dudgeon producing and David Hentschel engineering. Billboard heard it as "Crocodile Rock" crossed with the Stones' "Street Fighting Man", maybe even a send-up of the Stones, and called it great fun either way. It has since been covered widely and turned up in films, TV and video games.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.