On Aug. 31, 1997, Princess Diana\u2019s abrupt, untimely death in a Paris car crash stunned the entire world.<\/p>\n
One week later, 2,000 people converged on London\u2019s Westminster Abbey to remember the Princess of Wales, just 36 years old with two young sons.<\/p>\n
There, famed British singer-songwriter Elton John\u00a0performed the musical tribute, a re-worked version of his Marilyn Monroe-inspired hit \u201cCandle in the Wind.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sept. 13, 1997, John released \u201cCandle in the Wind 1997\u201d as a double-sided single along with \u201cSomething About the Way You Look Tonight.\u201d On this day in 1997, the six-time Grammy Award winner hit #1 on the UK charts with what remains \u201cthe best-selling charted single of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elton John included \u201cSomething About the Way You Look Tonight\u201d on his 25th studio album,\u00a0The Big Picture<\/em>. Five days after its solo debut, the British legend released the song as a double A-side single along with \u201cCandle in the Wind 1997.\u201d<\/p>\n Selling more than 5 million copies, the double A-side quickly became the best-selling single in UK history, topping the charts in John\u2019s homeland for five weeks. It fared even better in the United States, where it sold more than 11 million copies and spent 14 weeks atop the\u00a0Billboard<\/em>\u00a0Hot 100. To this day, \u201cSomething About the Way You Look Tonight\/Candle in the Wind 1997\u201d remains the\u00a0only diamond-certified single\u00a0in U.S. music history.<\/p>\n Most artists would be ecstatic over the kind of success \u201cCandle in the Wind 1997\u201d brought Elton John. However, the \u201cTiny Dancer\u201d singer hasn\u2019t performed the re-worked version live since Princess Diana\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n Diana\u2019s son, Prince Harry,\u00a0reportedly asked\u00a0the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer to sing the 1997 track at a 2007 concert marking the 10-year anniversary of her death. According to Harry\u2019s 2023 memoir\u00a0Spare<\/em>, John refused, feeling the song choice would be too \u201cmacabre.\u201d Instead, he performed his 1970 single \u201cYour Song.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the end, it reached a point where I started feeling really uncomfortable with the charity single\u2019s longevity,\u201d John wrote in his 2019 autobiography\u00a0Me<\/em>. \u201cIts success meant there was footage of Diana\u2019s funeral week after week on\u00a0Top of the Pops<\/em>. It felt as if people were somehow wallowing in her death, like the mourning for her had got out of hand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Aug. 31, 1997, Princess Diana\u2019s abrupt, untimely death in a Paris car crash stunned the entire world. One week later, 2,000 people converged on … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\nElton John Was Ambivalent Toward His Biggest Hit<\/h3>\n