Elton John has achieved a lot during his lengthy and illustrious career, so he was a natural choice to be given the iHeartRadio Icon Award at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards last night. iHeartRadio went all out with honoring the legend, too, as they pulled out all the stops.
The award was presented to John by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who ran through some comedic fake facts about John. Lil Nas X then joined in to pay tribute. After the award presentation, there was a tribute performance from Demi Lovato, HER, and Brandi Carlile. HER started by playing “Bennie And The Jets’ at a piano, when then segued into Carlile performing “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me.” Lovato wrapped things up with a rendition of “I’m Still Standing,” and John himself even joined in during the song’s climax.
Ahead of the performances, John also gave an acceptance speech and thanked the aforementioned artists for paying tribute to him. He also spoke about how stunned he was by American radio early in his career, saying, “When I first came to Los Angeles in 1970, radio was so important. I’d never heard radio in America before because I had never been here before, but it was just incredible to me. In England, we had one station. Over here, you’d have music coming out of the radio in all sorts of formats, all sorts of styles… I was a pig in sh*t, basically.”
Watch some clips from the show below.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
