My mom, knowing me as well as she does, was surprised to learn that I like Elton John’s recent song with Dua Lipa because it’s new and I, as a general rule, do not like new music. Ironically, despite being my mom, she does like new music and listens to new music radio stations, so she informed me that it made Elton John the first artist to have a song hit the charts in six decades.

“You should review a song of his from each decade,” she suggested. And that’s all I needed to hear because I’m on Year 5 of this column and there are only so many ideas.

So, here’s an Elton John song from the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 each for each of the six decades in which he’s had one, and songs that charted in the decades where he didn’t crack the Top 10. Turns out the guy is really pretty good.

1970s: “Rocket Man”

The ’70s were by far the most prolific decade for Elton in the Top 10, which meant this should have been the hardest call. Especially since the choices were: “Your Song,” “Rocket Man,” “Honky Cat,” “Crocodile Rock,” “Daniel,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Bennie and the Jets,” “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me,” “The Bitch is Back,” “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” “Philadelphia Freedom,” “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” “Island Girl,” “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word” and “Mama Can’t Buy You Love.”

Seriously, look at that list! If anyone had released even one of those songs they’d still be making a living from the county fair circuit. It’s a legitimately amazing run for just 10 years.

That said, “Rocket Man” is one of my all-time favorites. I’m a sucker for ’70s songs about astronauts (I’m looking at you, “Space Oddity”) and this is one of the few works in any medium to really humanize the profession. If you look at astronauts as regular people with a cool job you find out about cool stuff like Leland Melvin’s dogs, Chris Hadfield’s mystery novel, or American hero Buzz Aldrin straight-up punching a conspiracy theorist in the face. I could watch that punch a million times.

Oh, and it’s a beautiful, heartfelt song. Truly belongs among the list of greats.

1980s: “Sad Songs (Say So Much)”

This one makes me mad. We’ll get to that in a second.

Elton’s top 10 hits from the ’80s are “Little Jeannie,” “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues,” “Sad Songs (Say So Much),” “That’s What Friends Are For,” “Nikita,” “Candle in the Wind” and “I Don’t Wanna Go on with You Like That.” Not as strong as the ’70s list, but not bad! There are a lot of classics on there.

What makes me mad at the ’80s is that my favorite Elton John song from this decade is “I’m Still Standing,” which never made it above No. 12! How is that not a Top 10 song?! Screw you, the entire decade of the ’80s. The only good thing to come out of that decade was me.

Anyway, “Sad Songs” isn’t a terrible second choice. It has that unidentifiable ’80s quality that really places it in a certain place and time, but it’s still a great song. Maybe someday someone will adequately explain to me what’s going on in the video.

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1990s: “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”

This was a tough one. It’s a shorter list but with a functional tie: “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” and “Candle in the Wind 1997.”

On the one hand, you have the Princess Diana remake of “Candle in the Wind.” It’s a touching tribute to his close friend and really captured the feelings of a lot of people after her tragic death. Even compared to the Marilyn-Monroe-inspired original, it’s deeper and more emotional in both lyrical content and performance. That said, it’s a remake of an existing song, and it is kinda a burn on Marilyn Monroe.

Then there’s the first single from the soundtrack to “The Lion King.” The entire album is a classic even by the standards of Disney movies or of an artist who’d had 26 top-10 hits in the 30 years to that point. I absolutely loved that movie as a kid, and the songs were a big reason why. It even led to my love of Shakespeare when I found out that it was a loose remake of “Hamlet,” with slightly more singing warthogs. (I have my theories about Polonius but he doesn’t have a song in the First Folio version.)

What it comes down to in the end is a song written for kids and a song written for adults. I was a kid in 1994 so my nostalgia squarely rests with the former. If you disagree, just pretend I went the other way and I won’t argue.

2000s: “I Want Love”

This is the first decade since the ’60s when Elton John didn’t have a Top 10 song in the Billboard Hot 100, which is astounding. He did have three songs on the Adult Contemporary chart: “Someday Out of the Blue,” “I Want Love” and “Answer in the Sky.”

It’s something that happens to every solo artist who’s been around long enough. He hits a point where the music starts to sound like what you hear in a dentist’s office. The songs are still good—don’t get me wrong—they’re just not good in a way that makes them stick with you after you’ve heard them let alone want to hear them again later.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t familiar with any of these. I listened to them all and they’re all… fine. I chose this one because Young Iron Man is in the video and does it in a single take.

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2010s: “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again”

I didn’t have much of a choice: The only Top 10 single on any U.S. chart was this song, written for the end credits of Elton John’s musical biopic, “Rocketman.” He performed with the guy from “Kingsmen,” who played him in the movie.

It’s pretty good! I don’t have much to say about it, but it’s good. It’s a throwback to his ’70s stuff, which would provide a great bookend to the column if I was writing this in 2019. Man, that would have been a great way to wrap up a column. But there’s another decade to go…

2020s: “Cold Heart”

Instead, we have “Cold Heart,” which is probably my favorite song of his since the ’80s. His voice is still absolutely distinctive and instantly identifiable, but otherwise it sounds absolutely nothing like an Elton John song from any other era.

And credit to him for that. The man’s 74 years old, he’s been releasing songs since 1968 and he’s got a song that peaked at No. 7 on the Hot 100 and sounds so fresh and contemporary that it didn’t even cross my radar. That’s incredible! It’s so easy to have so much success that you just stick with it, and here he is branching way out of his lane and succeeding at it. May we all be as flexible and open to change into our 70s.

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.