Time magazine has announced its highly anticipated Icon Of The Year for 2024.

Last year saw Taylor Swift take the crown for her insane achievements in entertainment, and the year before that it was actress Michelle Yeoh who’d had a massive year and became the first ever Asian woman to win an Oscar for lead actress.

This year, though, saw none other than Sir. Elton John crowned as Time’s Icon Of The Year 2024.

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While previous winners such as Swift and Yeoh have had monumental pop culture moments the year of their win (think the Eras Tour and Yeoh’s Oscar’s win), John receiving the 2024 title follows a career-spanning decade upon decade of monumental moments.

The singer retired from touring in 2023, after performing around 4500 concerts over his 60-year career.

This year, he’s releasing Elton John: Never Too Late, a documentary that reflects on his life and career, set to hit Disney Plus on December 13.

Elton John’s life and career in pictures

He also hosts a podcast titled Rocket Hour, and has written music for and produced musicals Tammy Faye and The Devil Wears Prada.

On top of it all, his 2024 was capped off with the success of his song Rocket Man.

Released 52 years ago, the lead single of album Honky Château hit one billion streams on Spotify this year.

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But John’s year has also had it downfalls.

After contracting an eye infection earlier in the year, the singer released a statement in September saying he had been left “with only limited vision” in his right eye.

Then, just last week, he shared that he has lost his eyesight. However, his husband David Furnish remains optimistic, piping up when the topic arose during John’s interview with Time.

“I just think it’s just gonna take time, right?” he said.

But aside from his achievements of the past year, John has had one of the most successful careers the entertainment industry has ever seen. 

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He has had 57 Top 40 hits in the US, was the 19th person to ever achieve EGOT status (winning one Emmy, six Grammys, two Oscars and one Tony), and has sold more than 300 million records worldwide.

But his career hasn’t always been smooth sailing, as Time writes, the singer has ”bested or evaded the four horsemen that cut down his generation’s boldest names: drug addiction, AIDS, irrelevance, and suicide.”

But instead of sitting in his downfalls, the iconic musician has used his experiences to better the lives of others becoming a spokesperson for mental health, starting his own AIDs foundation, advocating for sobriety and even taking on the role of Eminem’s sponsor and orchestrating Robbie Williams’ first stay in rehab, and – of course – irrelevancy has never really been a battle the star has needed to fight.

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These days though, after six decades of life in the spotlight, John has somewhat reluctantly taken a step back in his career.

Despite his love for performance, the singer says he’s happy to hang that hat up if it means he gets to focus on his role as a husband and father to two sons, Zachary, 13, and Elijah, 11.

”On my gravestone,” he told Time, “All I want it to say is ‘He was a great dad’.”

“I’ve lived an incredible life, but it’s been a hell of a life,” he added elsewhere in the interview.

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