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Jump Up is the album that redeems Elton John from his famine years as a fallen superstar exiled to less verdant pastures. Showing more spunk than anyone might have expected at this late date, he's put himself back on top simply by making a tour de force of a record that says he knows he's worth it. Even if he never again comes close to inciting the mass hysteria of the mid-Seventies, the sheer stylistic breadth of Jump Up should secure Elton John's reputation as a rare master of pop form.

With The Fox, the king of Seventies mass-market pop-rock has finally found a comfortable balance between the churchy turgidity of "serious" efforts like Blue Moves and the irresistible thrust of his finest singles. For a change, there's no glaringly obvious filler, and Elton John's lusty pop gospel singing eschews the earlier extremes of oratorical histrionics and rock & roll brattiness. Tune for tune, these eleven songs make up John's most consistently listenable collection in years.

John also seems determined to regain the grip on the pop mainstream he lost after Rock of the Westies.

For his first album in two years, Elton John's wiped the slate clean and exchanged longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin for War of the Worlds lyricist Gary Osborne. Instead of recording with a set band and producer Gus Dudgeon, John's coproduced himself and used studio musicians to turn out his sparest LP since Honky Chateau. But this move toward simplicity is a step into emptiness, since A Single Man is nothing more than a collection of trivial hooks performed about as perfunctorily as possible.

If John and Taupin's final collaboration.