Elvis Costello Singles Ranked, 1-10

If you’re just joining us, check out the About This Project link for details. Basically, I make playlists of all the singles by certain musical artists and then try to order them using the guiding principle “do I like each song more than the last song.” I define “single” in a broad enough way to include any song that was released as a purchasable single in any format in any country; as a promotional single in any country; as a video; or generally any song that I know charted anywhere. My main sources are Wikipedia (mostly reliable) and Discogs (reasonably reliable). I welcome editing feedback since sometimes I favor speed over spelling.

While I have been an Elvis Costello fan at every point in his career, my top ten leans heavily on his classic early work – particularly This Year’s Model. Thank you for reading through however much of this you read through.

10. (I Don’t Want to Go To) Chelsea
(Elvis Costello and The Attractions)

First single from This Year’s Model (1978), released as a single in 1978

Lyric I Especially Like:
Men come screaming, dressed in white coats
Shake you very gently by the throat
One’s named Gus, one’s named Alfie
I don’t want to go to Chelsea

Might have been just a poor relation to “All Of The Day (And All Of The Night)”, “I Can’t Explain” or even “Clash City Rockers” had it not been for Bruce Thomas’ great bass-line. Meanwhile I was trying to fit in this lick from an old Pioneers record, though which one I can’t recall. “Ha bloody ha” said the first taxi driver that I asked to take me there after the record came out.

Elvis Costello, 1989 liner notes for Girls Girls Girls

“(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” was not on the U.S. version of This Year’s Model because it was too British. Apparently its lyrics – with references to the Chelsea fashion district in London and films like Alfie – were going to be so incomprehensible to us Americans that the mere inclusion of it on this album might spell utter sales disaster (despite the fact that it was a rather large hit in the U.K.). So in the U.S., they removed both this song and the song “Night Rally” (another great anti-fascist song) and replaced them with “Radio Radio” (#12). Thus, the U.S. version of This Year’s Model has one less song than the U.K. version. Thus, I may have first encountered “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” on the Girls Girls Girls collection in 1989, which is bothersome. It boggles the mind that record companies were so convinced of American’s utter ignorance of all things U.K. that they never bothered to release a host of great songs in the United States – the most egregious example being, perhaps, Costello-buddy Paul McCartney’s biggest U.K. hit “Mull of Kintyre.”

Anyhow, assuming you are from outside of the UK, all you really need to know to understand the song is that the drums, bass and guitar all contribute great hooks to the song and Steve Nieve’s keyboard come in sounding like they’re from a French new wave murder mystery film. The Attractions at their best were an endlessly inventive band and there’s a real sense that they (along with producer Nick Logue) are discovering this song even as they play it. Just fantastic.

What I Love: The Attractions use of rhythm in this song – including in Costello’s vocal melody – mesmerizes me.

9. You Tripped At Every Step
(Elvis Costello and The Attractions)

Third single from Brutal Youth (1993), released as a single in 1994

Lyric I Especially Like:
And you would sing along with little tell-tale staggers
While balancing on daggers
Though they were killing you
You looked so deadly

I found the real “Rocking Horse Road” in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was one of those lovely suburban neighbourhoods that was, at once, utterly benign and filled with reminders of a claustrophobic life from which a career in music and emotional cowardice once offered an escape. “You tripped at every step” was a candid reminiscence of what occurs when that exit is not taken.

Elvis Costello, liner notes for the 2002 rerelease of Brutal Youth

Elvis Costello does not perform “You Tripped at Every Step” often. Indeed, according to the Elvis Costello Wiki, he’s only ever played in live 35 times. It was a very minor hit in the UK (it only reached 83 on the charts) and didn’t chart at all on this side of the Atlantic. In fact, the only song from Brutal Youth that got much airplay in the U.S. was the excellent “13 Steps Lead Down” (#47 on my list, and #6 on the U.S. Modern Rock chart). This is by far my favorite song on its parent album but it is no wonder the U.S. charts didn’t embrace it. According to Costello in Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, the song is an autobiographical piece about “the misery [he] provoked and the darkness that could envelope two people once so brightly in love.” The lyrics are about alcohol, violence and desperation and are sung with an enormous amount of empathy for the victim. This is one of the last songs that The Attractions recorded together.

What I Love: Costello’s falsetto “oooo” at the beginning, the backing vocals, and Nieve’s piano.

8. Brilliant Mistake
(Album: The Costello Show, Single: Elvis Costello)

Single from King of America (1986), released as a single in 2005

Lyrics I Especially Like:
I wish that I could push a button
And talk in the past and not the present tense

“Our Little Angel,” “Glitter Gulch,” and “Brilliant Mistake” continue the theme of exile and a simultaneous attraction and repulsion to an ideal. That is why the album is called King Of America. It is inherently contradictory.

Elvis Costello, liner notes for the 2005 reissue of King of America

King of America was a life changing album for me. I grew up listening to a ton of country music – my father was a huge fan. Our house had this central intercom system that my parents used to “listen in” and make sure my brother and I had gone to bed when we were little. We had a large house so in theory it was also useful for communicating messages like “time for dinner” and “I need help with the groceries” but the voices often came out garbled and more often than not, we’d have to walk and find whomever we were trying to communicate with. However, the system also allowed you to tune into a radio station and blast the music all over the house. We had no air conditioning when I was growing up, so this meant the windows were always open. Thus, you could blast the music out into the yard too. When my dad was doing work around the house, 9 times out of 10 the radio was set to a country station. As kids, this drove my brother and I crazy. On the positive side, we heard classics like “I’m Gonna Hire A Wino.”

Anyhow, I was much more into punk, metal , alternative/college/new wave and just straight up popular rock. I turned my nose up to country music probably more because my father liked it than because I genuinely didn’t. When King of America came out in 1986, I bought it because it was an Elvis Costello record (and I think we’ve established I was a fan) without having heard anything but the lackluster cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” (#96) and ended up being blown away by the record from start (this very song) to finish (“Sleep of the Just”). The album is credited to The Costello Show – a way perhaps to describe the fact that different musicians play on many of the songs. This track features Costello, Mickey Curry on Drums, Jerry Scheff on string bass (his work is a highlight on this song), T-Bone Wolk on electric guitar and piano accordion, and future frequent Costello collaborator Mitchell Froom on Hammond organ and harpsichord. Costello ultimately reveals himself to be “the villain” referenced in the song’s title – he himself is the brilliant mistake, or perhaps his stage persona. The song is at turns darkly humorous and borderline heartbreaking and features some of Costello’s best songwriting work. It wasn’t released as a single until 2005.

What I Love: I love how almost everything kind of drops out at the top of the third verse and leaves Costello (who is about to reveal himself as being the titular mistake) to sing mostly unaccompanied.

7. God Give Me Strength
(Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach)

Promotional single from the motion picture Grace of My Heart (1996)

Lyrics I Especially Like:
Since I lost the power to pretend
That there could ever be a happy ending

“God Give Me Strength” was originally written for the film Grace of My Heart – here’s Kristen Vigard singing it from the film (well, her voice, it is Illeana Douglas’ body). In the movie, the song is a monumental flop (despite the fact that its generally agreed that the song is brilliant). In real life (where it is also generally agreed that the song is brilliant), the song breathed new creative life into both Costello and Bacharach. I can’t remember where I heard this, but I recall that they may have composed this together over the phone – Bacharach’s music, Costello’s lyrics. They enjoyed working together so much that they collaborated on a whole album of songs (Painted From Memory – including soingles that I ranked at #65, #29 and #17), a single from one of Bacharach’s albums (#108) and several songs on Costello’s most recent album, Look Now (none singles, but all very good). They have been working on turning their collaboration into a musical.

The late 90’s were what I refer to as my musical “dark ages.” I was no longer a college DJ (which I had been from 1984-1994) and my main sources of new music were MTV, whichever radio station was playing alternative music in Honolulu or listening booths at record stores. I went from feeling like I heard everything to feeling like I heard nothing. Plus, much of the alternative music at that time turned me off – I still can’t stand Limp Bizkit or 411. I probably read about Painted From Memory before I heard it and when I saw it was a collaboration with Burt Bacharach, I can no longer recall if I was intrigued or turned off. I didn’t buy the record right away – in fact, I don’t think I bought it until Amazon was a thing. Idiot me, I fell in love with the record the first time I heard it (and discovered a genuine love of Bacharach’s ouevre). I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s one of my favorite broken heart records (along with ABC’s Lexicon of Love and The Cure’s Disintegration). Since I had not seen the film Grace of My Heart, I heard this song for the first time when I listened to Painted from Memory and only heard the Vigard version much later.

The song is unmistakably a Burt Bacharach composition from the first notes. I imagine fans of his work might have been suspicious of how Costello’s voice was going to mesh with Bacharach’s lush arrangements, but they needn’t have worried. His voice has rarely sounded better and it sometimes soars above the music, sometimes floats on top and something is subsumed in the strings and beauty. I love how Costello has borrowed the classical tradition of letting the word “God” be a high note – notice how in that first line, his vocal melody ascends to “God” then drops down to “strength.” It’s a smart classical touch that even a person with limited musical training such as myself is able to notice. As the song reaches it’s emotional crescendo, Costello climbs comfortably into his high register and the strings take over where there would typically be a Nieve keyboard jam. The lyrics – about a forlorn, scorned lover mourning and wishing for revenge – are simple, direct and poetic (without being cryptic). The piece is one of the finest songs from both artists’ careers.

What I Love: If forced to pick one thing, it would be the way Costello dances through “maybe I was washed out like a lip-print on his shirt” building to the devastating “I want him to hurt.”

6. Watching the Detectives

Stand-Alone single released in 1977

Lyric I Especially Like:
You snatch a tune, you match a cigarette,
She pulls the eyes out with a face like a magnet.

I got most of my musical ideas from records. With a young family to provide for, I didn’t have the money for going to clubs. The morning after the Sex Pistols created outrage by swearing on national live television, I was in a commuter train carriage full of scandalized tabloid headlines and high blood pressure.

Something was supposed to be changing. I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album, listening to it over and over. By the time I got down to the last few grains, I had written “Watching the Detectives”. The chorus had these darting figures that I wanted to sound like something from a Bernard Herrmann score. The piano and organ on the recorded version were all we could afford.

Elvis Costello, liner notes from the 2001 rerelease of My Aim Is True

Between recording My Aim Is True with Clover and forming The Attractions for This Year’s Model, Costello and producer Nick Lowe assembled a band consisting of bassist Andrew Bodnar and and drummer Steve Goulding from Graham Parker & The Rumour (Parker, like Costello and Joe Jackson, were often hyped as “angry young men” at the time) and keyboardist Steve Nason (later rechristened “Steve Nieve” and a future Attraction and Imposter) to record “Watching the Detectives.” Perhaps to the relief of everyone involved after the lackluster chart reception of the singles from My Aim Is True, “Watching the Detectives” was Costello’s first single to chart. It was a big enough hit that it was added to U.S. pressings of My Aim Is True (where most of us over here first heard it).

To my ear, “Watching the Detectives” was Costello great leap forward as a songwriter. The other songs from My Aim Is True are excellent, but I feel like he moves from pub rocker to new wave (ugh) innovator on this song. It is Costello’s favorite song from the first five years of his career (although not mine). While The Attractions would form nearly immediately after this single broke big, the rhythm section from The Rumour are really fantastic on this tune – Goulding’s showy drums mixed with Bodnar’s slinky bass create the film noir world of which Costello sings. This is one of the first songs I loved by Elvis Costello and unlike, sat, “Alison” (#85), I have never grown sick of it. I never once bothered to try and think about what it meant until very recently, apparently it is about a woman watching a detective show on TV while ignoring her date/paramour. Who knew?

What I Love: Nick Lowe’s production. You feel like you are in the studio with the band.

5. I Want You
(Elvis Costello and The Attractions)

Third single from Blood and Chocolate (1986), released as a single in 1986

Lyric I Especially Like:
I want you
Did you mean to tell me but seem to forget
I want you
Since when were you so generous and inarticulate

The intimate, if not almost pornographic, tone of “Crimes of Paris,” “Poor Napoleon,” and “I Want You” were typical of my mood at this time. The album was a pissed-off 32- year-old divorcé’s version of the musical blueprint with which I had begun my recording career with The Attractions.

Elvis Costello, liner notes for the 2002 reissue of Blood and Chocolate

We previously listened to Costello play this song with Fiona Apple on her list (#6). When is a song a cover? Elvis Costello is playing guitar on that track, it’s at an Elvis Costello event and he selected Apple to sing the song. The single is credited to Fiona Apple, but I don’t know if it’s a cover so much as an alternate version.

The sound of this track was always going to be the aural equivalent of a blurred polaroid, so no apologies for the lack of fidelity. None are needed, it’s just a pornographic snapshot; lots of broken glass, a squashed box of chocolates and a little blood on the wall.

Elvis Costello, liner notes for the 1989 compilation Girls Girls Girls

By the time they recorded Blood and Chocolate, The Attractions had been together for eight years and tensions were running high. It’s no coincidence that the band took an eight year break after the tour associated with this album before “splitting” (i.e. – removing Bruce Thomas and then continuing as The Imposters) for good. In the liner notes for Blood and Chocolate linked above, Costello describes how the tensions in the band and the limitations of the particular studio where they recorded the record led to most of the songs being completed in a very small number of takes – the better for spending less time around each other. The album is loud, murky and raw. “I Want You” in particular sounds like the band is peeling the scab off every emotional wound they have. The lyrics are angry, the music is brutal and every performance drips with venom.

I did not like this song at all when I first heard it because it made me feel profoundly uncomfortable. I was 18 or 19 when it came out and was reacting purely to the visceral feeling of the song. Blood and Chocolate was one of the first time CDs I ever owned so I had the very new experience of being able to easily skip over songs that I didn’t want to hear. I wonder if this song would have grown on me sooner if I had to listen to it on an album or cassette? At any rate, over the course of the past three decades as I’ve matured and learned to relish art that makes me feel something, this song has become one of my favorites.

What I Love: Costello’s vocal performance. Chilling.

4. (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding
(Elvis Costello and The Attractions)

Red vinyl promo single (U.S.) released in 1980
Cover of a song originally recorded by Brinsley Schwarz (1974)

Lyric I Especially Like:
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony

Costello producer Nick Lowe wrote and recorded “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” with his band Brinsley Schwarz as a kind of parody of aging hippies. I don’t honestly know if Costello heard something different in it or if Lowe imagined the words might also be able to be taken seriously, but when The Attractions perform this song it is no parody – it is a challenge, a lament and an earnest conjuring of the qualities in the title. It has become a staple of Costello’s live shows (it is one of his top five most played songs) and I had the pleasure of seeing him perform it as a duo with Nick Lowe both times I saw them in concert. It is one of the finest cover versions of a song that I know of – I suspect many people who love the song have no idea it is a cover. It sounds like it belongs to The Attractions. This song was added to American pressings of Armed Forces, which is appropriately ironic.

Not much more to write – it is inspiring and it rocks.

What I Love: Drummer Pete Thomas owns this song.

3. Shipbulding
(Elvis Costello and The Attractions)

Japan-only single (1983)

Lyric I Especially Like:
Within weeks they’ll be re-opening the shipyard
And notifying the next of kin

Clive Langer gave me a tape of a melody that he had written for Robert Wyatt, so that I might write some words for it while I was away on tour. “Something about ‘time'” was his only instruction. In a way it was, for as I began work on it, the lurid reports of the Falklands war, in the ever-sensitive Australian press, brought to mind this barely futuristic story. Robert’s version will always be the ‘original’ and mine the ‘cover’ but while I know I’ve sung it better many times since, the mood and the playing are strong. From the severity of Steve’s introduction to David Bedford’s string harmonics at the end and perhaps most of all Chet Baker’s trumpet solo.

Elvis Costello, liner notes to the 1989 compilation Girls Girls Girls

Producer, musician and songwriter Clive Langer – who worked on both Punch the Clock and Goodbye Cruel World – wrote the music. As you read in the quotes, jazz great Chet Baker plays the heart-wrenching trumpet (here’s Baker playing Costello’s great non-single “Almost Blue”). The song was written for (and a hit for) singer Robert Wyatt and his version is a gem (and was one of David Bowie’s favorites). I first heard this on the 1985 The Best of Elvis Costello and The Attractions which I had on cassette. In 1985, this song did almost nothing for me because it didn’t have clanging guitars or a driving beat. By 1989, after four years of listening to the cassette all the way through a million times, it had become one of my all time favorite songs. This was the advantage to not being able to easily skip over songs – it forced you to listen to every cut (unless you kept rewinding to hear the same song over and over again forever, which also happened a bunch). “Shipbuilding” is a heartbreaking look at a community that benefits financially from war but pays a terrible cost for war at the same time and the denial necessary to continue with the titular task. There can’t be more than 100 words in the song but it beautifully captures how this community is both resuscitated and smothered by the Falkland War. Without question one of Costello’s greatest lyrics and fine performances by everyone involved.

What I Love: Chet Baker and that trumpet solo tear out my heart.

2. Pump It Up
(Elvis Costello and The Attractions)

Second single from This Year’s Model (1978), released as a single in 1978

Lyric I Especially Like:
She’s been a bad girl
She’s like a chemical
Though you try to stop it
She’s like a narcotic

Scrawled on the fire-stairs of a Newcastle hotel in an amphetamine and vodka frenzy. The sexanddrugsandrockandroll life beckoned, amply demonstrated both day and night during the infamous “Live Stiffs” package tour. This anti-rock’n’roll song was my last stand before I gave in to it completely. The painful morning brought a large but simple editing job, allowing us to learn to play the song the next evening, in Lancaster. In this spirit the recording is a “genuine” 1st take.

Elvis Costello, liner notes for the 1989 compilation Girls Girls Girls

When you’re a kid, it’s easy to assume every song is about drugs or sex or possibly drugs and sex. There was a small collection of songs that we all assumed (sometimes correctly) were about masturbation – the very racist and thus not linked “Turning Japanese” by The Vapours and “She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper spring (sic) to mind. “Pump It Up” was also considered to be one of those songs, though it turns out only via double entendre. The lyrics are oblique enough that you can read several meanings into them.

But, you know, the reason why I loved this song (my whole friends group loved this song) wasn’t necessarily the lyrics (though we all did love shouting the title) but more everything else about the song – Steve Nieve’s wacko keyboard noodling, Bruce Thomas’ relentless and irresistible bass line, Peter Thomas “you better get off your ass and dance” drumming and both Costello’s great guitar hooks and near-rap singing. When I saw Costello play this song live during his solo your, he opened a “music box” that cued a drum machine backing track. It was a great little bit of theater.

In a section from Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink quoted in the Wikipedia link for “Pump It Up,” Costello discusses how this song was heavily influenced by Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blue” (which in turn may have owed a debt to “Too Much Monkey Business”) and why he thus isn’t particularly bothered that U2 borrowed from this song on “Get On Your Boots” (#32).

What I Love: If I had to pick just one, it would be Bruce Thomas’ bass.

1. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror
(Elvis Costello featuring The Dirty Dozen Brass Band)

Germany and Spain single from Spike (1988), released as a single in 1989

Lyrics I Especially Like:
One day you’re going to have to face a deep dark truthful mirror
And it’s going to tell you things that I still love you too much to say

I had worked with Allen Toussaint before in 1983. He had produced an unusual version of Yoko Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice,” recorded with the Attractions and the T.K.O. Horns. Now he pretty much set the scene for “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror” with his colossal piano part – the Dozen played off his performance and so on. At best, it was like seeing a sketch turn into a painting.

Elvis Costello, liner notes for the 2001 reissue of Spike

I admit, the lyrics get a little bonkers, but that’s part of what makes this piece great. The gentlemen over at Elvis Costello Song of Week have a lot to say about their take on the lyrics but I want to write about a couple of other things. First, as you listen to the song, note how The Dirty Dozen Brass Band responds to the lyrics – their playing style changes in subtle ways to reflect what is going on in the tune. Second, listen to Allen Toussant who is in complete control of this piece – it’s almost as if he’s conducting the band. Third, listen to how the first two elements absolutely lift up Costello. I have mixed feelings about Spike but had it been 12 songs with Toussaint and The Dirty Dozen (I would love to hear this particular line-up take on “Veronica” or “Let Him Dangle”) I think my feelings would lean a lot more towards “love it.” Toussaint and Costello would, of course, create an entire album together after another decade and that record is choice.

“Deep Dark Truthful Mirror” didn’t hit me immediately. A friend of mine who loved Elvis Costello to death was the first person in my life who was an enormous advocate of this song. She and I and our friends all went to see Costello play at Colby College when we were at Bates in the late 80’s and this was the song she most looked forward to hearing. I had expressed some doubt that this particular song would get played but I remember two very specific things. First, buzz was my friend got a little tipsy, tried to get backstage and was ejected. Second, Costello played this song solo (he played almost everything solo on that tour) after she’d allegedly been kicked out. At the time, this seemed like a perfect encapsulation of being an Elvis Costello fan. Upon later reflection, it was also perhaps thematically linked to this song as a whole. The important thing about this story is that I eventually came around to feeling like I owed it to my friend to try to hear what she loved about this song since I got to hear him play it and she didn’t. Turns out, she was absolutely right – this is one of his all time great tunes.

What I Love: Allen Toussaint’s piano is perfection

Coming Soon:  The Pretenders

Elvis Costello Singles Ranked – 111-116 – 101-110 – 91-100 – 81-90 – 71-80 – 61-70 – 51-60 – 41-50 – 31-40 – 21-30 – 11-20 – 1-10