Have you heard Little Big Town's cover of Elton John's 'Rocket Man'?

27 March 2018, 09:49

Earlier this month, Sir Elton John announced plans for not one, but TWO tribute albums in his honour.

Firstly, Revamp will see covers of Elton John songs by contemporary pop artists including Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and Lady Gaga. Released on the same day will be Restoration, featuring some of the world's top country artists putting new spins on his tracks.

A couple of tracks from the latter album have been released, and they're rather gorgeous.

American quartet Little Big Town have unveiled their version of Elton classic 'Rocket Man':

Little Big Town collaborated with NASA’s Dr Scott Bolton, to use “space sounds” from the recent Mission Juno, which explored Jupiter.

“One of the main reasons why we chose ‘Rocket Man’ was because we were so intrigued by not just, of course, Elton John, but by using the sounds from the Juno project, so we had all these Jupiter noises,” the band's singer Karen Fairchild said.

“We were like, ‘What if we did the a capella version of “Rocket Man” on the Elton record?’ Frank Liddell [producer] loved that idea, and we were off to the races.”

Meanwhile country star Chris Stapleton - who recently collaborated with Justin Timberlake on his new album - has released his version of Elton's 'I Want Love':

"At any stage of life you can pick out a moment and a place in time, things that were going on and there's an Elton John song playing somewhere in the background," said Stapleton.

"He's always going to be present in every musician's mind and mine as well because his music reaches that far."

Revamp and Restoration will be released on April 6.