“I’ve been singing with Elton all my life—he just didn’t know it until about 10 or 20 years ago,” Brandi Carlile tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about working with the storied singer-songwriter Sir Elton John. Featuring compositions co-written by John and Carlile along with John’s longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin and producer Andrew Watt, their collaborative album Who Believes in Angels? is a triumphant collection that celebrates the eternal promise held by music. For John, after ending his touring career in 2023 on the highest note possible with performances at Dodger Stadium and Glastonbury, he was seeking a project that would be forward-looking and feel different from his usual collaboration with Taupin. “If I’d just made another Elton John record, I would’ve killed myself,” he says. “I needed her. I needed her talent, her energy, her humour, and her brilliant lyrics. I’ve got two of the greatest lyric writers in the world, Bernie Taupin and Brandi Carlile, and the lyrics in front of me. When we got going, it was like, whoosh—like an express train.” The album was done in three weeks, start to finish. Who Believes in Angels? opens with back-to-back salutes to two other titans of queer pop—the emotionally charged singer-songwriter Laura Nyro and the fiery soul-preacher Little Richard. While Carlile credits John as one of her heroes and biggest influences, the project is a true team effort, with cuts like the raucous “The River Man” and “Someone to Belong To” feeling inspired simultaneously by John’s carousing, hooky rock and Carlile’s meticulously crafted Americana. It is, as John notes, a proper “duet album”, with both their voices harmonising through each song. The prospects of getting real and celebrating differences recur throughout; the questioning title track tackles the idea of true friendship where people “set the pleasantries aside”, while the joyful “Swing for the Fences” highlights those who resemble “a heartbeat cannon in a quiet spot”. Who Believes in Angels? is structured like an old-fashioned vinyl record even in its digital release, with definitive closing tracks for each five-song “side”. Both tracks—one by a solo Carlile, the other by John—have a sense of bittersweetness. Carlile’s hushed ballad “You Without Me” preemptively looks at how her life will change when her children leave the nest. John’s sweeping “When This Old World Is Done with Me” comes to terms with his mortality and looks back on his life—“I’ve had clouds with silver linings, complicated mornings,” he sings—with a brass band providing its mournful yet hopeful coda. Together, they make a resounding statement about life’s perpetual motion—one that began from a place of frustration and ended up in one of gratitude. I was in such a horrible mood when I started making this record,“ John says. ”I was really tired. I was irritable. The world was going crazy. I needed her to push me. I knew she could just go along with anything. She’s that talented.”