Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

Me? I liked him for a very long time. But I'm not sure how much I do now. I'll have a think and get back to you.

1. Encountering him in 80s childhood: the almost capuccino-pop textures (I may be off the mark there) and heavy wordy satire of Punch The Clock seeped into me and made it my favourite EC LP for ever amen.

2. His eternal 'returns' and reinventions... come the end of the 80s I get mildly more clued up and start to work out how EC's career fits together, what he's been up to, what are the highs and lows... I decide, roughly, that he is pretty much a genius. People have said before that 'genius' is an unhelpful term, and I agree that it tells you little save that I admire EC. But what I mean is, a) I think he is the most accomplished lyricist in the history of pop over the last 40 or so years - at least amongst what I have heard. b) he is able to be comic and serious, elaborately tongue-in-cheek or straight-out sincere (but maybe I shouldn't exaggerate the range here - I'm not sure, I think there is an 'EC mode' somewhere). c) he is able to dip in and out of genres with rare distinction and understanding; he always shows huge (even excessive?) respect for the genres he uses. (This makes for a slight difference with Merritt, who clearly loves lots of the genres he essays but is still less 'respectful' towards them.) d) He has a rare melodic gift which gets rather eclipsed by his even rarer lyrical gift; he reminds me of McCartney, really. So, classic, classic, classic.

3. But hang on. I don't actually *listen* to EC that much. I have to admit that for all his brilliance, he's not always what I want to hear. Possibly there's a certain lack of... 'lightness' in his work - he's so 'full-on' about everything that I can't quite see him pulling off the nonchalant grace of, say, 'Ask', 'Here's Where The Story Ends' or 'The Saddest Story Ever Told'.

4. Then again - his 1998 collaboration with Bacharach, Painted From Memory, seems to me magnificent. Lyrical simplicity yet point; fabulous melodic dynamism; lush arrangements. From my particular POV, one of the most vital records of the last 10 years, and a great highlight of EC's entire career. In the end, I can only admire this fellow.

I'll have to combine this with the 'records never played' answer. Somehow I have a near complete EC collection and I've never listened to any of it!

My favorite quote about him came from Bernard Sumner, god among men:

Interviewer: "What do you think of wordsmiths like Elvis Costello?"

Sumner: *deep breath* "Don't talk to me about that overrated fucking jerk."

Genius.

Heh.

Ned - it must be really cool to have a complete collection of records by people you dislike.

I wouldn't mind looking like Beck, or even Elvis Costello, but I guess that just proves David Lee Roth's point - but I'm not a critic, so maybe it's OK.

I find Sumner's voice far more compelling than EC's; like Ned, lyrics to me are not the be-all-end-all qualification for "good vocals." (Even though I'd take Sumner's lyrics over EC's...) But I can see why people like EC; he does have a knack for a hook (but so does Sumner--no pun intended ;-)--but I must say, I have two of his records, and I hardly listen to them, ever.

Dylan I like, though. He sounds quite fragile ("Har-har-har, that's 'cause he can't sing in tune!" NOT FUNNY, CLICHE-WIELDING ASSHOLES!), as opposed to EC, who comes across to me as pretty smug a lot of the time. Of course, Bright Eyes sounds fragile, and I don't know if I could name one vocalist whose teeth I'd rather kick in...

My Aim Is True is a great record that took me a long time to get into. In fact, it's one of my favourites, despite the pub-rock backing group. I always thought they were the perfect band for the 50s Punk Buddy Holly thing he was being marketed as at the time. The lyrics are great, too: "now that your picture's in the paper / being rhythmically admired"? Brilliance. I haven't listened to any of his other stuff except "Pump It Up" and "I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea" and "Veronica" and they're all good too. Hey Ned, how much for the collection?

that said, he's not luther vandross and when he sings out of his range, it's at best endearing, at worst really, really, really bad.

i like e.c. because he's got a lot of pop smarts, see for example his nicks of everyone from abba to stax. i can listen to him rather than, say, dylan because not only does he have fine lyrics but he takes an active interest in the recording process and is an underrated melodist.

Apparently an excerpt from the upcoming Uncut:

Songs of Bacharach and Costello

Four-album set that revisits a favourite collaborator

It’s Painted From Memory (1998) and Taken From Life, which is a collection of songs that Burt and I wrote over the last 15 years for a proposed Painted From Memory musical. So you’ll hear other people singing a couple of those original songs, but also a bunch of songs that have never heard before. We’ve compiled them with a couple of songs from Look Now (1998) and some recordings that were piano/voice explorations of what the songs would sound like if they were sung by other people. We’ve put them all together to create an impression of what it would have been like to have that score.

There’s another disc of live performances of Painted From Memory songs, mostly with Steve Nieve and myself, a couple of them orchestral. Finally, a whole album of Bacharach/David songs, which I thought would be fun to include. This is a love letter to Burt. We went into the studio last september and recorded two songs with Vince Mendoza conducting a 30-piece orchestra. So the bookends for this Taken From Life are newly recorded. The Imposters and I recorded a third song, in Capitol Studios with an orchestra. It was a few years since we’d worked together, but it didn’t take very long before I’m in the booth and he was on the call-back saying, “Elvis, you’re not singing the right melody.” So I had to be on top of it.

Ha, I like those final 2 lines

I like a little of the Bacharach material here and there but the album as a whole is Too Much (for me). It's also the point where he definitely starts oversinging EVERYTHING. There is still some tethering to subtelty in the singing on All This Useless Beauty. I find his "She" voice painful to listen to.

I mean there is a high drama to the singing on e.g. Imperial Bedroom and Juliet Letters, but it's much less earsplitting

Imagine him singing this now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCDy7sKKLy0

It took a long time for the Bacharach album to grow on me, but I also kind of wish Dusty Springfield was the vocalist. She was very ill when they were recording it so it would never have happened, but still, that would've been a pretty amazing comeback.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-GL9dCvREc

Hey, that song has its own thread!

But you can just leave that one right here, thanks.

https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/elvis-costello-king-of-america-other-realms

Love that album but why include "a three-disc compendium of recordings and collaborations from across the last four decades"?

I too love that album but that box is pretty unappealing IMO. Of all the expanded editions of EC’s LPs I’ve bought over the years, the extras haven’t made much impression (probably the most was “Shoes Without Heels” of one of the previous KoA reissues, but that was a b-side I’d missed I think).

The demos often sound appealing but I rarely find much there for me.

Stop trying to make Jimmie Standing In The Rain happen, Dec. At least it's good for pee breaks at the gigs. On a King Of America box set tho

I actually like the 2005 Rhino reissue a lot - aside from the color-tinting on the cover (I wish they left it alone), it may be my favorite of that series.

With that in mind, that's partly why this box set feels so bloated. Unless it's truly a better mastering of the album, it's going to feel way too redundant. One hopes the live show will get its own release. EC was going to release a series of live albums at one point, like it's own min-bootleg series, but it seemed like those plans went out the window after two shows, albeit really great ones (the Mocambo show from 1977 and the Hollywood High show from 1978). One wonders if this KoA-era show would've been an eventual installment.

"Jimmie Standing In The Rain" is all right - it's not a favorite, but some fans really do love that song. Even Greil Marcus did a whole entry on it in his column.

Mr Veg got me tickets for the new “Radio Soul! Early Songs” tour - June 15 (in Sacramento!) sooooo excited

Gonna be fun for sure, but lol at EC finding a way to not call it a hits tour. Like, Paul McCartney, the Early Years! Robert Plant in the 70s! The Who: Keith Moon Era!

"The Early Collaborative Works of Paul McCartney"

"John Mellencamp During the Reagan Presidency"

i'm glad this covers through Blood and Chocolate which is probably my all time favorite album of his. I haven't seen Elvis since the When I Was Cruel tour and have been iffy on much of his work after that until the last album which I love.

yeah that run covers all my like, fully diehard EC fandom so i’m super ok with this

tbf, in recent years, he's leaned heavily on his "classic" era. I've seen EC seven times now, and the majority of those setlists were from 1977-1986, with a Riot Fest appearance (his first appearance since his health scare) dedicated almost entirely to 1977-1982 with most of them coming from This Year's Model and the set's one outlier being "I Want You" from Blood & Chocolate.

It was a surprise to me when I first saw him in 2011 because I figured his setlists would be dominated by newer material but that was definitely not the case with the Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook - except for "Veronica" and "I've Lost You," most of the numbers were from the classic era with the rest being a handful of awesome covers. ("Heart of the City," "Purple Rain," "And Your Bird Can Sing," "Out of Time," "License to Kill"....) My next show was dedicated mostly to Imperial Bedroom.

I saw him do a spinning wheel show in the late '80s when I was at college, and a friend of mine got picked out of the audience to choose a song. She was a huge fan and she got to go up and shake his hand and all, and she asked him (off mic) for "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes." He just kind of shook his head and said "Don't Know It." Then he suggested, "How about ..." (whatever the next song he played was) and she said, sure! Because it was a good song too.

I can understand, trying to keep the whole catalog fresh in your mind and rehearsed has to be hard.

There's a web page somewhere that logs all of EC's songs and the most recent live performance of each. Virtually every single has had a "recent" outing, even the one that became "Radio Radio" !

Delete "single", substitute "song"

how are we defining “recent” and “virtually” here

even the one that became "Radio Radio" !

haha wow imagine if he were to announce a tour named after it

Forgot about that one and had to look it up. “Radio Soul.”

see first post of revive :)

Ah, well there you go then.

checked the front page of the wiki. from his most recent projects:

Coward Brothers, November 2024: 12 of 20 songs have never been performed

A Face In The Crowd, September 2024: 9 of 21 songs have never been performed by Elvis*. One song dropped from the production was performed once, on a pandemic livestream by Steve Nieve. *One song of the 13 was performed once, by another singer, at an Elvis show during an eight-song set of Crowd songs.

Cold War, November 2023: 2 of 2 songs have never been performed

Taken From Life, March 2023: 4 of 16 songs have never been performed

The Resurrection Of Rust, May 2022: 1 of the three songs has been performed 17 times between January 1972 and September 2022. One was performed 4 times in one week of July 1972. The third was performed once in November 1972.


dipped into a few favourites:

Put Your Big Toe In The Milk Of Human Kindness was performed 24 times between November 1986 and April 1987

Stalin Malone was performed 5 times between 1995 and 2001

the Johnny Cash song off Purse was performed once in 2018

of the 20 songs on The Juliet Letters: 6 were last performed in 2006 (at a show with the Brodskys at Sydney Opera House), 2 were last performed in 2001 at his Meltdown, 1 was last performed in 2009, 1 in 1996, and 3 are thought to have been performed in January 1995.

two of the Flowers In The Dirt songs have never been performed, one was performed 13 times in mid-1989, My Brave Face was performed nine times between 1989 and 2014, That Day Is Done has been performed irregularly between 1987 and 2023.

Oh yeah. Saw it before but couldn’t quite parse through all the punctuation

xxp

I’d love to see a “Useless Beauty” show - that’s probably the most recent (er 28 years-old) record I’d happily see as a whole-album gig.

I fell off from EC after “Cruel” although the autobiography’s fun. We should do (if we haven’t) some kind of POX “EC 2003-Present”

I overlooked Useless Beauty until I stumbled upon Costello & Nieve - it's great and probably my favorite Elvis Costello release of the '90s, not that there's much competition. Costello and Nieve still do tours with just the two of them, and they actually did a one-off in that format as part of the Gramercy Theater residency last year in NYC.

The most recent album surprised me. IMHO it's his best and most consistent album in a long time - I actually enjoy it a lot from start to finish. Before it came out, I would've said that When I Was Cruel and The Delivery Man were the last ones I really liked, but even then with caveats. (I'd say half of The Delivery Man is excellent while the other half is just all right, and When I Was Cruel suffers from CD-era bloat with maybe 20 minutes worth of lesser songs that weigh it down.)

I think every other album in between that isn't some attempt at straight-ahead jazz or classical music will have anywhere between three or five cuts worth going back to - not exactly great but better than I would've expected.

Which album is the most recent one? His discography is all over the place with different projects and hard to keep track!

The Boy Named If. I agree completely with birdistheword, it's like a spiritual successor to Brutal Youth and When I Was Cruel was also my departure point. I didn't care for sugarcane and the other 00's albums; Momofuku is not bad I guess but I can't remember anything about it.

Funny, Cruel was the last one I recall really getting into as well. Time flies! I remember thinking he's got a song about being 45, he is old, lol.

I'm glad I got to see him with classic reunited Attractions line up behind Brutal Youth and Useless Beauty. I remember him playing the same night as the Sex Pistols when touring behind the latter, and thinking, which would I regret not seeing more? EC and crew weren't at their best and were about to break up again, but I'm glad I went.

Got to see him play a small club behind Cruel, and he was great, but I also saw him last summer or so with Charlie Sexton in the band, and he was still great. Could EC possibly be ... underrated?

Fascist confessions bring detractors
Keeping shtum
Brings dough and attractions
Costello, ideas trenchant borrows
New song benefactor
Is the past tomorrow

is that an epic palindrome?

Funny how so many of us got off the bus at the same time (tbf, North was so unutterably shite how could you not) & have the same experiences with his post-Cruel / Delivery output (some songs seem like keepers but we can’t really remember many of them)

I should check out the new one, why the hell not

Yeah I used to pride myself on following every twist but yeah North was the most boring record I'd ever heard.

North and The Juliet Letters for that matter bore me as well. I definitely have a great appreciation for classical music and jazz (including straight jazz) but if anything, that just makes the shortcomings of both albums even more painfully obvious.

It's really disappointing how two of my favorite recording artists of the late '70s and '80s (Prince and EC) can produce so much great work across a wide array of styles, and then when they finally turn their full attention towards jazz, they come up with the most milquetoast records of their entire career.

North still sucks - I just checked - but I still really like the sound of Juliet Letters. He’s still singing like he did on Spike and hasn’t been lost up his own vibrato yet. There are at least 4 or 5 very good songs there. I enjoy it a lot more than the Bacharach record.

I will definitely check “…IF” - thanks!

I've never bothered with any of the Costello albums post Spike.

Since I said this four years ago I was inspired to check out Painted From Memory due to "Toledo" appearing on a Bacharach compilation. It helped that it was Costello's best-rated album since the 80s on RYM.
Though the arrangements seem self-consciously "classy" in an old-fashioned way, and the singing has obviously been rehearsed to perfection (with a certain loss of spontaneity), I liked this record quite a lot. Though it doesn't rock at all, the better songs have a lot of clever and soulful twists and both Costello and Bacharach seemed completely "present".

...in that they could seemingly both "do their thing" without getting in each other's way or holding back.

yeah i still love that one

I actually didn't like that album when I first heard it. It took a long time for it to grow on me, but it may say something that I didn't listen to very many Burt Bacharach songs at the time. I've since become a big fan of Bacharach's work with Dionne Warwick, and I think Painted from Memory is excellent too, probably his best studio album of the '90s.

(Elvis's that is. I don't think Bacharach recorded any others under his name during the '90s.)

I loved Painted from Memory when it came out but I haven't been moved to revisit it in years and years. Juliet Letters I just repurchased on vinyl and I still really like it. I got to see him and the Quartet perform this live and it was so great.

I saw him and Nieve as a duo once, a great show that allowed him to successfully indulge in jazz and classical and Burt while still being himself imo. I think they just toured or are playing a few shows as a duo again this year, maybe?

Yeah, February and March, ending with three nights in Chicago with four extra musicians.

i saw E.C. with (Sexton and) the Imposters a year and a half ago. Nick Lowe opened. It was awesome and was only about a $50 show. Am really bummed this tour is like 4x the price.