Whether it’s the shear chutzpah of selecting Elvis as your stage name, stunts like busking at a convention of record company bigwigs to get noticed and signed in the U.S., or releasing your next album on vinyl and as a digital download only, the bespectacled Declan Patrick MacManus, better known as Elvis Costello, has shown he has what it takes to succeed and survive at this wicked game.
aDawgg:
Elvis Costello – Watching The Detectives
Perhaps it’s fitting, after listening to Elvis Costello again and again the past couple of weeks, I ended up settling on his first serious hit, one I knew would end up on the short-list anyway. “Watching The Detectives” was a standalone single released in the U.K. in late-1977, before later making it onto releases of My Aim Is True. The rhythms and chorus mask a dark and menacing tale of murder. This single marked the start of a wide-ranging career now in its fourth decade and matched by very few.
Bean:
Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army
Oliver’s Army” is the kind of hit that indie bands are still trying – unsuccessfully, for the most part – to write. A genuine indie (or post-punk or new wave or whatever you want to call it) / pop crossover is rare. For it to also say something real about the state of the world – and not just some generic Peace To The World drivel – is almost unheard of. And to have it still be loved by people of all tastes, ages, shapes, and sizes over 30 years later? Almost a miracle.
Tamboosh:
Elvis Costello – Lipstick Vogue
A musical chameleon and soldier against cynicism, who nevertheless never resorts to sentimentality, Elvis Costello understands the essence of every single genre he has covered and executes them perfectly. Trying to explain what is lovely about a song is hard to express when limited by words. While listening to his songs, I jotted down my thoughts. I’ve used phrases like ‘pop perfection’, ‘beautifully country’, and ‘heart-breaking gospel’, but “Lipstick Vogue” simply got a heart. I love this song and whatever grand description of the other songs, nothing can win it from a heart. It’s fast, tragic, passionate, and unmistakably Costellian.
