Elvis Costello

What's So Funny Bout Peace Love & Understanding

Indoor Fireworks breaks my heart every time I hear it. The memoir was excellent, do the audio book where he reads.

never got the appeal.

Doll Revolution

Huge Elvis Costello fan -- crazy to think it's closing in on 45 years since My Aim is True. I will always claim that album (and every song on it) as a favorite, although it is in a virtual tie with King of America (and every song on it).

R1, and anyone on this thread who remembers OP Brian, I cannot put into words how happy I was to discover and be able to purchase the painting at the link. I've had it over a year now and it still makes me smile.

Man Out of Time

I love his voice.

He's back on tour. This time with The Imposters.

Don't know if it's the same concept from his COVID cancelled tour from last year. Dates are at the link.

This Year's Model is one of the best albums ever by any artist.

He made an album with Burt Bacharach?

I'm a huge fan of his music and love his voice which I did not appreciate when I was younger.

My favorite song is Alison. But it's only one of many favorites.

I love the duet he did with Glenn Tilbrook.

Tilbrook's was my favorite male voice of all time when Whisper to a Scream came out. And now it's Costello's.

Costello produced and sang backup for "Black Coffee in Bed."

Love him, OP and that is one of my favourite tracks. Also love the melancholy I Wanna Be Loved.

So handsome back in the day. Here's a clip.

Veronica is heartbreaking as well, doubly if you dealt with someone you love having Alzheimer’s.

Getting Mighty Crowded could be a Motown song from the 60s

Underrated for too long, Costello was a great songwriter. He was really a jazz singer singing in the rock idiom. Didn't surprise me that he married the great jazz singer Diana Krall... they had a similar phrasing, musicality to their singing.

Though he wrote the lyrics, but not the music... this anti-Falkland Wars song always seemed a great example of Costello as a great jazz singer.

I've seen EC in concert three times, spaced about ten years apart. The first time was during the initial spark of his popularity -- and he was an asshole up there on stage, refusing to sing his popular songs. (He wanted to sing only his new songs from his new album.) He got booed and heckled.

Frankly, the 2nd & 3rd concerts meld together in my mind, but he was very audience-oriented. He sang pretty much every song you expected to hear. His voice was in good shape. He began one concert with "Oh, I just don't know where to begin ..." (Accidents Will Happen).

He was really punk then, in the first concert you saw.

BTW I love him. I looked a bit like him in my early twenties.

Shipbuilding

In my twenties I bought all of his records. I haven’t listened to them in 25 years. Something happened and the appeal wore off. I can hear Mystery Dance occasionally, but that’s it. I think I don’t appreciate being reminded that Diana Krall exists.

"Every Day I Write The Book" - mostly because I remember hearing it in college; I came from a small town that was all about hair bands, so EC was like this new & exotic creature to me.

Diane Krull is so dull - I mean good for Elvis for find stability, but she must bore him to tears

"Every Day I Write The Book" is one of my favorite EC songs.

I don't know that much about Diana Krall.

Also like:

Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes.

This Year's Girl.

Party Girl.

What's So Funny about Peace Love and Understanding.

Accidents Will Happen.

Town Cryer.

Etc.

I fucking hate Elvis Costello. What's the point of having him? Also, a racist.

He had a big 90s moment when The Other Side of Summer closed out the episode where the cast goes to the beach at night to witness the luminescence

He did a country covers record. But I can’t be bothered.

Pump It Up is always played at fraternity parties and is an evergreen bro anthem

A vegetarian since the early 1980s, Costello says he was moved to reject meat after seeing the documentary The Animals Film (1982), which also helped inspire his song "Pills and Soap" from 1983's Punch the Clock. In January 2013, Costello teamed up with Paul McCartney to create an ad campaign backing vegetarian foods produced by the Linda McCartney Foods brand

He was rude and ungrateful towards Linda Ronstadt. He should have felt privileged and honored that she covered his songs.

Didn’t he admit to being a kleptomaniac or am I just high?

"I Want You"

"Uncomplicated"

Just the range of songs on this thread.... what a writer.

R33 I'd forgotten about "I want you" - the soundtrack to a time in my life I was adrift in the darkness of sex, obsessions, drugs, jealousy. What dark, relentless song... still gets me hard and agitated.

[quote]It's the stupid details that my heart is breaking for It's the way your shoulders shake and what they're shaking for it's knowing that he knows you now after only guessing I want you It's the thought of him undressing you or you undressing

He’s my favorite artist. And Imperial Bedroom is my favorite album.

He can't sing.

[quote] Getting Mighty Crowded could be a Motown song from the 60s

It *is* an R&B song from the 60s. He didn’t write it.

I always enjoy him in interrviews -- this one is a standout.

^interviews, of course. The "r" on my keyboard has been sticking lately; surprised it didn't come out interrrrrrrviews!

R29: "Pump it Up" is one of my favorites.

R37 Inane.

As was said upthread, sometimes it's easy to forget he started as a punk/ska new wave artist. Here he is in 1978 - half Iggy Pop, half Jacques Brel.

When he collabed with Paul McCartney, their partnership resulted in Elvis' biggest American hit, "Veronica", and Paul's final American hit, "My Brave Face".

They also co-wrote the exquisite "So Like Candy", which was released as a solo Elvis track, but they demo'd it as a duet. I wish they'd released a fully produced duet version, but I love hearing them both harmonizing on the demo.

R43 Interesting find. With Costello's weird timbre and vibrato (and that edge to his phrasing that's almost like a natural autotune, before autotune) all you can hear is Costello - McCartney's voice is buried.

He was mean to Linda Ronstadt.

He sang background vocals on Til Tuesday's "The Other End of the Telescope"

Elvish Coshtello!

Can someone answer my question at r32?

Thank you, R42!

Oliver's Army

Dan Gilroy said that he asked Madonna years after she was famous about the Elvis Costello record she never returned and she yelled "I don't have it!"

He's an asshole

I don't know that anyone else would be able to bounce back after calling Ray Charles & James Brown the n-word.

My first time hearing his music was in The Godfather III, I liked it enough to find out what the song was and who was singing it.

He was in 200 Cigarettes, right? I liked that movie.

Sad About Girls

I met him when I worked at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was really sweet. Thanked the staff, and told a story about the hotel he stayed in. He said he walked on the ledge and hung from the neon sign at said establishment. I can’t remember if it was in the Terminal Tower, or not. Anusways, nice guy.

EC wrote about and interviewed Joni Mitchell (in 2004, I think, before her health crisis in any event). Here it is, full of weird typos that seem to have been caused by a sloppy scan of the article itself, and no subsequent edit. It's in-depth and very interesting:

Don’t like most of his shit

^Using the word "shit" to refer casually to the musical output of anyone says more about you than it does about the subject of your "opinion." In fact, it says a LOT about you and your mind. You're basically illiterate. What would the musical equivalent of that be?

I don’t know why, but the way he sings annoys the hell out of me.

Sweet Pear

I've always loved his vocal performance on "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding." It manages the neat trick of both puncturing empty '60s platitudes (as they stood in 1979) and sounding genuinely anguished that they came to nothing.

Linda elevated his songs. He could never deliver a song like this

R58 is obviously insufferable!

He really can’t sing

I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down