After 333 shows and almost five years, Elton John has officially concluded his Farewell Yellow Brick Road world tour in Stockholm.
John’s last song of the night – and therefore of the entire tour – performing at the city’s Tele2 Arena on Saturday night (July 8) was the tour’s semi-title track, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. Before performing the song, Sir Elton gave a final speech to what was said to be 45,000 people in attendance to thank them for their support throughout his career.
“I’ve had the most wonderful career … unbelievable,” John said (via Rolling Stone). “Fifty years of pure joy in making music… how lucky am I? I wouldn’t be sitting here… without you. You bought the singles, the CDs, the albums, the cassettes… [and] More importantly, you bought the tickets for the shows. You know how much I love playing live. It was my lifeblood to play for you guys. You were absolutely amazing.”
Watch the full speech and closing song performance below:
“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” was originally released in 1973 and served as both the second single and the title track of John’s seventh studio album. The song reached the top ten of the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and South Africa singles charts.
According to setlist.fm, John has performed the song live about 1475 times over the past 50 years. It served as the close for nearly every performance on the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which originally kicked off in September 2018 at the PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The tour lasted through North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand through March 2020. After that, the tour was delayed by nearly two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a hip injury that required surgery for John to recover from.
The tour resumed at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans in January 2022 and John would be back on the road regularly for the next 18 months. His last UK show was headlining Glastonbury, where he was joined by guests including Brandon Flowers and Rina Sawayama. In May 2023, the tour was officially recognized as the highest-grossing world tour of all time.