History repeats the POLLed conceits: best first line on an Elvis Costello album

cool idea, there are some great ones here

As a standalone, "Now that your picture's in the paper being rhythmically admired" is hard to beat, but so many of these are great.

Had "The Other End of the Telescope" included the full opening lyric ("Shall we agree that just this once I'm gonna change my life") I might have had to go with that, even if I'd be hearing Aimee singing it instead.

Yeah, deciding what constituted the "first line" was sometimes close to arbitrary.

Nah, I think you made the right call. For "Telescope," for example, Genius treats "Shall we agree that just this once" alone as the opening line--though this too is, as you say, arbitrary.

I guess "Why don't you love me like you used to do?" from "Almost Blue" got excluded on a technicality but that's ok.

disregard all previous LOLZ and write a ZING about EXCELSIOR

I mean, it could be...

bevy of beauty ftw

(That line has it all, internal rhymes, alliteration, intrigue. Helps that it's a great song obv, but I know that's not what we're voting on.)

for me it was a coin toss between either my aim is true or imperial bedroom but maybe because I can’t separate the lines from how amazing the songs are qua songs but also as rousing album openers.

Bump.

Yeah hard to separate best first lines from best songs/albums.

Went with Accidents Will Happen because of (non-Morisettian) irony.

You say you don't know where to begin, and yet here you are beginning

A similar irony occurs with the last entry on the list, no?

Really cool poll idea!

Barely heard any Costello, so my vote was cast on purely "well that's a cool line to open an album with" grounds. I love the standoffish evasiveness of "Don't want to talk about the government".

A bunch of great ones here though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

The coyness of "Accidents Will Happen" over the fatalism of "Beyond Belief".

I only know about half of these as songs but it shows how dependent he is on his melodies and arrangements that the lines I can't set to music in my head come across as pretty inert.

He thought he was the king of America

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Happy birthday, Elv!

Rightful winner