Elton John

By the time the Elton John biopic Rocketman hits theaters in May, the seventy-one-year-old music icon will have made a dent in his three-hundred-date Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour—allegedly his last—which lands in Raleigh on Tuesday. It’s the perfect moment to immortalize the grandiosity John flaunted throughout his fifty-year career. Your fandom may go as far back as his gallant days of dressing as a bumblebee or Donald Duck, but have you ever contemplated geopolitical conflict while listening to “Nikita” or wanted to fuck a piano after hearing “Bennie and the Jets?”  After thirty-plus albums, Sir Hercules is more than the loudmouth rouser of “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” or the vulnerable spirit yelling “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.” He’s a global music citizen whose artistic oddities have put him on songs with Janet Jackson, Kanye West, Luciano Pavarotti, and Young Thug. This is a bucket-list show, though you might find yourself living in a bucket if you fork over the astronomical prices to get up close and personal with the Rocketman. —Eric Tullis