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The Captain & the Kid

album by Elton John

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ2297074 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Captain & the Kid is the twenty-eighth studio album by British musician Elton John, released in 2006. It is his second autobiographical album with lyricist Bernie Taupin, picking up where Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975) left off. The Captain & the Kid chronicles the events in their lives over the intervening three decades.

The Captain & the Kid reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart, a considerable improvement over the performance of John's preceding Peachtree Road in 2004, which peaked at No. 21. Captain reached No. 18 on the US Billboard 200, before quickly falling off the charts. At concerts in early 2007, John made clear his dissatisfaction with Interscope Records' promotion of the album, having threatened to terminate his contract with the label and because of that, John did not release a solo album again until 2013's The Diving Board.

Background

According to Bernie Taupin, Elton John's manager at the time, Merck Mercuriadis, suggested in 2005 that John and Taupin write a follow-up to Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Captain & the Kid” is album by Elton John. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Captain, album and Elton, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006, 1975, 2004, 2007—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2006-09-18. For this dossier, Captain, album and Elton is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “album by Elton John” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

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 Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2297074. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 1975, 2004 and 2007.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Captain & the Kid”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Captain & the Kid primary sources, The Captain & the Kid archive and Captain research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Captain & the Kid”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Captain & the Kid” 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.