The Very Best of Elton John

The Very Best of Elton John is a greatest hits compilation album by British musician Elton John, released in October 1990. His first career-retrospective compilation album, and fourth official greatest-hits album overall, it was released in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe, and in other countries such as Japan and Australia, but not in the United States, where the box set To Be Continued... was released the following month instead.
The compilation spans his second album Elton John in 1970 to Sleeping with the Past in 1989. After the double A-sided "Sacrifice"/"Healing Hands" single became a hit and the third best-selling single of 1990 in the United Kingdom, the album became an instant smash in that country. It spent its first two weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart followed by nine weeks at number two, kept there by Madonna's Immaculate Collection. In all, the compilation spent 145 weeks inside the UK top 200 album chart, making a total of 11 re-entries, and it was certified 9× Platinum by the BPI on 1 March 1995.
It includes a total of 28 hit singles plus the new songs "Easier to Walk Away" and "You Gotta Love Someone", both of which also made the charts between 1990 and 1991. The release also spawned a music video compilation, which was originally released on both laserdisc and VHS, and reissued on DVD.

Track listing

Track 25 is different on European version of the album. "Whispers" from Sleeping with the Past takes the place of "Passengers".
"Pinball Wizard", "The Bitch Is Back", "I Don't Wanna Go on with You Like That" and "Easier to Walk Away" are excised from the vinyl version of the compilation.
For track 15 information about performance with Kiki Dee is not provided in the release.
The track "Bennie and the Jets" is a live version, probably taken from Here and There live album from 1976 – as all tracks on this release are placed in a chronological order, and it is placed on CD2 between "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word" – two songs released on a single in 1976. This live version was not released on a single.
The durations are different on the back cover and the actual CD. On Disc 1, "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" is listed as 6:12, while the actual song runs at 5:38 and "Philadelphia Freedom" runs at 5:42, rather than 5:19. On Disc 2, the back cover lists "Song for Guy" as 5:02, but the actual track runs at 6:40. The same applies for "Nikita", which the back cover states for 4:53 but the actual song plays at 5:44. "I Don't Wanna Go on with You Like That" is the radio single edit instead of the back cover's album cut listing of 4:33.

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