Elton John Heaps Praise Upon Fontaines D.C.: ‘The Best Band Out There Right Now’

2024 has been a massive year for Fontaines D.C. In June they played a well-received set at Glastonbury and followed it up with another at Reading & Leeds Festival last month. Their fourth album Romance landed at No.2 on the Official Album Charts in the U.K. and was a critical smash.

Now, they’ve got the thumbs up from Elton John who has shared his love for the band in a new interview on his Rocket Hour radio show on Apple Music.

Speaking to Fontaines D.C.’s frontman Grian Chatten, the icon was effusive with praise: “For me, you’re the best band out there at the moment,” he said when introducing his guest onto the show. You can watch the full clip below.

“Having watched you at Glastonbury, having heard the new album, you’ve just grown every album,” John told Chatten. “You seem to have found your feet with this album in such a big way… it’s a brilliant record.”

John, who has used his Rocket Hour show to spotlight emerging talent, continued: “I think this album takes you – and I’ve been around for a long time – to a different level, and it’s going to stay around for a long, long time. But what’s more important about it: the music is really, really, really special. Congratulations on everything, Grian. It’s bloody wonderful.”

The praise is at odds with Liam Gallagher’s feelings on the band, who clapped back at the band following an interview where Fontaines said that the Oasis reunion didn’t excite them. ““F–k them little spunkbubbles I’ve seen better dressed ROADIES,” Gallagher wrote in one tweet. “They look like a sh-t EMF,”

The Irish band have released four albums, Dogrel (2019), A Hero’s Death (2022), Skinty Fia (2022) and Romance (2024), all of which landed in the Top 10 of the U.K. Album Charts and in their native Ireland. Romance, released in August, was their first on their new label home of XL Records, whose roster includes Radiohead, The Prodigy and more.

Fontaines were recently forced to cancel a handful of gigs in the US due to vocal injury to Chatten. The band pulled shows in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver this past weekend, and the tour is scheduled to resume in San Francisco tomorrow evening (September 24).

They’ll then head to Europe and the U.K. and Ireland for some of their biggest gigs to date in October and November. Perhaps John will be down the front…