Sleeping with the Past
1989 album by Elton John
Sleeping with the Past is the twenty-second studio album by British musician Elton John, released on 4 September 1989. It is his best-selling album in Denmark (where it was recorded) and is dedicated to his longtime writing partner Bernie Taupin. The album features "Sacrifice" and "Healing Hands", which were issued as a double A-side and became John's first solo number-one single in his home country on the UK singles chart. The single's success helped the album also reach number one on the UK Albums Chart, his first since 1974's Elton John's Greatest Hits. It also became his first platinum album in the UK since 1985's Ice on Fire. In the US it was certified gold in October 1989 and platinum in April 1990 by the RIAA. Sleeping with the Past became John's best selling album of the 1980s.
John and Taupin intended for the songs to reflect the style of 1960s R&B singers such as Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, whom they admired.
Guy Babylon made his debut on this album and would continue to play keyboards with John for the next 20 years, while Fred Mandel left the Elton John Band shortly after. John went into rehabilitation in 1990.
Background
With renewed creativity after 1988's Reg Strikes Back, Elton John and Bernie Taupin sought to create a cohesive album that had maintained a consistent theme.
The public source identifies “Sleeping with the Past” as 1989 album by Elton John. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sleeping, Past and album.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1753400. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1974, 1985 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sleeping with the Past” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.