Most of all, they reveal his heart, showing over and over again how his love of song can lift, wrench, open up the people who listen to him and to his music. They reflect his wide range of styles, revel in his literacy, plumb his depths. We’re celebrating with a collection of the fifty best Elvis Costello covers we could get our hands on. He continues to record – his most recent album, The Boy Named If, was released earlier this year – and has settled into the role of elder statesman that his talent earned him long ago.Ĭostello turns one year elder today, his 68th birthday. As he became a greater student, he became a greater teacher, giving credit in word and action to his influences, penning a well-received autobiography, and hosting the talk/music show Spectacle, where he interviewed and played with his peers. ![]() He delved into other genres, starting with country & western (to the dismay of both Costello fans and C&W fans, and to the pleasant surprise of music fans) and moving on to blues, jazz, orchestral, classical pop, and more. ![]() He began expanding his musical palette, making more complex songs with more complex rhymes. “I’m not angry,” Costello protested on My Aim Is True, and everyone nodded and smiled and patted his head.Ĭostello wasn’t interested in living on that particular cul-de-sac. ![]() Most commonly, he was lumped in with Graham Parker, Joe Jackson, Billy Joel, and others as an Angry Young Man. He was a nerd, what with his glasses and gawky suits (Dave Marsh memorably said that “Elvis Costello looks like Buddy Holly after drinking a can of STP Oil Treatment”). When Elvis Costello first appeared on the scene, the press fell over themselves not only to praise him, but to pigeonhole him.
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