Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy Singles chart), is a semi-autobiographical story about John's disastrous engagement to Linda Woodrow, and his related 1968 suicide attempt. The "Someone" refers to Long John Baldry, who convinced him to break off the engagement rather than ruin his music career for an unhappy marriage. It was viewed by "Rolling Stone" writer Jon Landau as the best track on the album: "As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight', the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on
Your Song self-deprecating narrator stumbles to get out his feelings, which despite being a melodramatic device, AllMusic calls "effective and sweet": "Your Song" was the inspiration for the song "We All Fall in Love Sometimes" on John's 1975 album "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy". "Your Song" was praised by critics upon its release and in subsequent years. Writing in the NME on its release Derek Johnson wrote, "The song itself is glowing and strangely haunting, the scoring is smooth and delicate and the performance is symptomatic of a new era in pop idols." Bill Janovitz from AllMusic described it as