Today, we transition from our obsession with animated cartoons to our equally strong and enduring obsession with 20th century music. One of our favorites, bar none, is Elvis Costello, born on August 25, 1954.
One reason that he, along with the late (and much missed) Alex Chilton, remains a favorite recording artist is an absolutely uncanny ability to cover an extremely diverse range of songs, genres and styles/eras of music with flair and panache.
Here's Elvis with another of our favorites at this blog, Stephen Colbert.
The first time I recall seeing Elvis Costello was on an excellent episode of Saturday Night Live way back in the 1970's.
Costello, the smartest and meanest singer/songwriter in the first wave of 1970s British punk rockers, first arrived as a sneering spitfire (with just a touch of nudge nudge wink wink), backed by The Attractions, an outstanding band which could match his ferocity and up the ante with high-level musicianship.
The lengthy entry on Elvis Costello at All Music.com, indubitably A LOT less enthusiastic and open-minded about his music than the (occasionally) humble scribe who writes this blog is, writes "Elvis Costello soon galloped away from the loud, fast rules of punk rock, demonstrating his musical and verbal facility with Armed Forces, a 1979 album that contained "Oliver's Army," "Accidents Will Happen," and his cover of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding."
All Music.com adds, "rapid musical evolution and switches in style became the rule in Costello's career, as he amassed a catalog that seemed to touch upon every conceivable genre of popular music. Starting with 1989's Spike, Costello seized the freewheeling opportunities of a solo act, bouncing from dense pop to classical compositions to collaborations with 1960's icons Paul McCartney and Burt Bacharach."
"This sense of adventure increased in the 2000s as he toured with the Imposters, cut Americana albums with his old cohort T-Bone Burnett, and collaborated with both New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint and the venerated hip-hop group the Roots."
The son of British bandleader Ross McManus, Costello (born Declan McManus) worked as a computer programmer during the early '70s, performing under the name D.P. Costello in various folk clubs. In 1976, he became the leader of country-rock group Flip City. During this time, he recorded several demo tapes of his original material with the intention of landing a record contract. A copy of these tapes made its way to Jake Riviera, one of the heads of the fledgling independent record label Stiff.
Riviera signed Costello to Stiff as a solo artist in 1977; the singer/songwriter adopted the name Elvis Costello at this time, taking his first name from Elvis Presley and his last name from his mother's maiden name. With former Brinsley Schwarz bassist Nick Lowe producing, Costello began recording his debut album with the American band Clover (later known as Huey Lewis & The News) providing support. "Less Than Zero," the first single released from these sessions, appeared in April of 1977.
By the summer of 1977, Costello's permanent backing band had been assembled. Featuring bassist Bruce Thomas, keyboardist Steve Nieve, and drummer Pete Thomas, the group was named The Attractions; they made their live debut in July of 1977.
Costello's debut album, My Aim Is True, was released in the summer of 1977 to positive reviews.
Along with Nick Lowe, Ian Dury, and Wreckless Eric, Costello participated in the Stiff label's Live package tour in the fall. At the end of the year, Jake Riviera split from Stiff to form Radar Records, taking Costello and Lowe with him. Costello's last single for Stiff, the reggae-inflected "Watching the Detectives," became his first hit.
This Year's Model, Costello's first album recorded with The Attractions, was released in the spring of 1978. A rawer, harder-rocking record than My Aim Is True, This Year's Model was also a bigger hit, reaching number four in Britain and number 30 in America.
Released the following year, Armed Forces was a more ambitious and musically diverse album than either of his previous records. It was another hit, reaching number two in the U.K. and cracking the Top Ten in the U.S.
In the summer of 1979, he produced the self-titled debut album by The Specials, the leaders of the ska revival movement. In February of 1980, the soul-influenced Get Happy!! was released; it was the first record on Riviera's new label, F-Beat Records.
Later that year, a collection of B-sides, singles, and outtakes called Taking Liberties was released in America; in Britain, a similar album called Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers appeared as a cassette-only release, complete with different tracks than the American version.
Costello and The Attractions released Trust in early 1981; it was Costello's fifth album in a row produced by Nick Lowe.
During the spring of 1981, Costello and The Attractions began recording Almost Blue, an album of country covers with famed Nashville producer Billy Sherrill, who recorded hit records for George Jones and Charlie Rich, among others.
Costello's next album, Imperial Bedroom (1982), was an ambitious set of lushly arranged pop produced by Geoff Emerick, who engineered several of The Beatles' most acclaimed albums.
For 1983's Punch the Clock, Costello worked with Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, who were responsible for several of the biggest British hits in the early '80s.
Costello tried to replicate the success of Punch the Clock with his next record, 1984's Goodbye Cruel World.
After the release of Goodbye Cruel World, Costello embarked on his first solo tour in the summer of 1984. He was relatively inactive in 1985, releasing only one new single ("The People's Limousine," a collaboration with singer/songwriter T-Bone Burnett issued under the name the Coward Brothers) and producing Rum Sodomy and the Lash, the second album by the punk-folk band The Pogues. Both projects were indications that he was moving toward a stripped-down, folky approach, and 1986's King of America confirmed that suspicion. Recorded without The Attractions and released under the name The Costello Show, King of America was essentially a country-folk record, and it received the best reviews of any album he had recorded since Imperial Bedroom.
It was followed at the end of the year by the edgy Blood and Chocolate, a reunion with the Attractions and producer Nick Lowe. Costello would not record another album with the Attractions.
During 1987, Costello negotiated a new worldwide record contract with Warner Bros. and began a songwriting collaboration with Paul McCartney.
Two years later, he released Spike, the most musically diverse collection he had ever recorded.
Spike featured the first appearance of songs written by Costello and McCartney, including the single "Veronica."
Two years later, he released Mighty Like a Rose, which echoed Spike in its diversity, yet it was a darker, more challenging record.
In 1993, Costello collaborated with the Brodsky Quartet on The Juliet Letters, a song cycle that was the songwriter's first attempt at classical music.
He wrote an entire album for former Transvision Vamp singer Wendy James called Now Ain't the Time for Your Tears.
That same year, Costello licensed the rights to his pre-1987 catalog (My Aim Is True to Blood and Chocolate) to Rykodisc in America. Costello reunited with The Attractions to record the majority of 1994's Brutal Youth, the most straightforward and pop-oriented album he had recorded since Goodbye Cruel World. The Attractions backed Costello on a worldwide tour in 1994 and played concerts with him throughout 1995. In 1995, he released his long-shelved collection of covers, Kojak Variety.
In the spring of 1996, Costello released All This Useless Beauty, which featured a number of original songs he had given to other artists but never recorded himself.
Painted from Memory, a collaboration with the legendary Burt Bacharach, followed in 1998.
A jazz version of the record made with Bill Frisell was put on hold when Costello's label began to freeze up due to political maneuvering.
Undaunted, Costello and Bacharach hit the road and performed in the States and Europe. Then, after Bacharach left, Costello added Steve Nieve to the tour and traveled around the world on what they dubbed the Lonely World Tour. This took them into 1999, when both Notting Hill and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me featured significant contributions from Costello. In fact, he appeared with Bacharach in the latter as one of a pair of Carnaby Street musicians, albeit street musicians with a gorgeous grand piano at their disposal.
In 2003, he returned with North, a collection of classically styled pop songs pitched halfway between Gershwin and Sondheim.
The next year, he collaborated with his new wife, Diana Krall, on her first collection of original material, The Girl in the Other Room.
That fall, Costello released two albums of his own original material: a classical work entitled Il Sogno and the rock music concept album The Delivery Man, featuring The Imposters.
Issued in 2006, My Flame Burns Blue was a live album with Costello fronting the 52-piece jazz orchestra the Metropole Orkest; the release featured classic Costello songs (with new orchestral arrangements) alongside new compositions and a performance of Il Sogno in its entirety.
The River in Reverse, a collaboration with R&B legend Allen Toussaint, arrived in 2006, followed by Momofuku, another effort credited to Elvis Costello & the Imposters, in 2008. That same year, Costello teamed up with veteran producer T-Bone Burnett for a series of recording sessions, the results of which were compiled into Secret, Profane & Sugar Cane and readied for release in early 2009. The pair also recorded a second album, National Ransom, which appeared the following year. The Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook!!!, which was recorded live over a two-day stint at the Wiltern in Los Angeles.
The next year or so was relatively quiet, but at the end of 2012 he released a new compilation called In Motion Pictures, which rounded up songs he contributed to films. Costello devoted himself to working with hip-hop band The Roots in 2013. Originally planned as a reinterpretation of songs from his vast catalog, the album Wise Up Ghost turned into a full-fledged collaboration and was greeted by positive reviews upon its September 2013 release on Blue Note.
In 2015, Costello announced that he was completing work on his memoirs, and that the book, titled Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, was scheduled for publication in October 2015. Costello also compiled a companion album, Unfaithful Music & Soundtrack Album, which featured a career-spanning selection of songs from his catalog, as well as two previously unreleased selections.
In July 2018, Costello revealed that he was recovering from a "small but very aggressive cancer." By the time he delivered the news, he was not only on the mend but had a new album with The Imposters in the can. Look Now, the group's first record together in a decade, appeared in October 2018.
Look Now was followed quickly in 2020 with Hey Clockface, the first album credited to Elvis Costello as a solo act in ten years. Inspired by revisiting the master tapes for "This Year's Model" for a soundtrack contribution to David Simon's The Deuce, Costello decided to rework the album of the same name by preserving the original Attractions backing tapes and adding new Spanish-language vocals by contemporary Latino musicians such as Juanes.
The resulting Spanish Model appeared in September 2021.
At the same time Costello was working on a new set of songs using the skills of Attractions' drummerPete Thomas and keyboardist Steve Nieve, along with longtime Imposters' bassist Davey Faragher. Recorded remotely, The Boy Named If eschews any hint of introspection in favor of the vitriolic sonic kick of early Costello records and big, tangled emotion. Released in early 2022, the album also features a duet with Nicole Atkins.
For more, check out the Elvis Costello discography - and listen to as many of his recordings as possible.
We extend big time fedora tips to Wikipedia and YouTube, which provided lots and lots and lots of material for this post. Also must credit All Music.com in the acknowledgments, as much as we, diehard music lovers all, loathe their correspondent's mindless fixation on chart success, whether albums and singles made the Top 40 - and frequent use of such cringe-worthy lines as "the album was a commercial and critical failure." Numerous records we absolutely love and can't get enough of at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog after numerous listenings were "commercial and critical failures."
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