Elvis Costello
Declan Patrick MacManus OBE (born 25 August 1954), known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer, songwriter, record producer, author and television presenter. Per Rolling Stone, Costello "reinvigorated the literate, lyrical traditions of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison with the raw energy and sass that were principal ethics of punk", noting the "construction of his songs, which set densely layered wordplay in an ever-expanding repertoire of styles."[5] His first album, My Aim Is True (1977), is widely regarded as one of the best debuts in popular music history. It spawned no hit singles, but contains some of Costello's best-known songs, including the ballad "Alison". Costello's next two albums, This Year's Model (1978) and Armed Forces (1979), recorded with his backing band the Attractions, helped define the new wave genre. From late 1977 through early 1980, each of the eight singles he released reached the UK Top 30. His biggest hit single, "Oliver's Army" (1979) sold more than 400,000 copies in Britain. He has had more modest commercial success in the US, but has earned much critical praise. From 1977 through the early 2000s, Costello's albums regularly ranked high on the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll, with This Year's Model and Imperial Bedroom (1982) voted the best album of their respective years.[a] His biggest US hit single, "Veronica" (1989), reached number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Declan MacManus" redirects here. For the Scottish footballer, see Declan McManus.
Elvis Costello
Declan Patrick MacManus
- Declan Costello
- D.P. Costello
- The Imposter
- Little Hands of Concrete
- Napoleon Dynamite
- Howard Coward[1]
- MacManus
- Elvis MacManus
25 August 1954
London, England
- Singer
- songwriter
- record producer
- author
- television presenter
- Vocals
- guitar
1970–present
Born into a musical family, Costello was raised with knowledge and appreciation of a wide range of musical styles and an insider's view of the music business. His opportunity to begin a professional career as a musician coincided with the rise of punk rock in England. The primitivism brought into fashion by punk led Costello to disguise his musical savvy at the beginning of his career, but his stylistic range has come to encompass R&B, country, jazz, baroque pop, Tin Pan Alley and classical music. He has released album-length collaborations with the classical ensemble The Brodsky Quartet, the New Orleans R&B songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint and the hip-hop group The Roots. Costello has written more than a dozen songs with Paul McCartney and had a long-running songwriting partnership with Burt Bacharach.
Costello has had hits with covers of songs, including Sam & Dave's "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down", Jerry Chesnut's "Good Year for the Roses" and Charles Aznavour's "She". One of the songs he is best known for, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding", was written by Nick Lowe and recorded by Lowe's group Brinsley Schwarz in 1974, but remained obscure until Costello released his version in 1979. Costello's own songs have been recorded by artists including Linda Ronstadt, George Jones, Dave Edmunds, Chet Baker and Alison Krauss.
Costello has won two Grammy awards, two Ivor Novello Awards awards, four Edison awards, an MTV Video Music Award, a BAFTA award, an ASCAP Founders award and a Gemini award. In 2003, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. From 2008 to 2010, he hosted a television show, Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., on which he interviewed other musicians. In 2015, he published a well-received memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.
Music career[edit]
1969–1976: Pre-professional career[edit]
Costello began writing songs and teaching himself to play guitar by age 14.[56][77] To test his songs in front of an audience, he performed them in folk clubs that permitted amateur musicians to perform unpaid.[58] He played these clubs regularly in London and continued in similar clubs when he moved to Liverpool at age 16, although folk music venues that welcomed original songs were scarcer in Liverpool than in London.[78] By 17, he was occasionally being paid a little money.[35] On the eve of the release of his debut album in 1977, Costello told a journalist that by that time he had written hundreds of songs.[79]
Writing[edit]
Since the early 1980s, Costello has written about music for publications including Hot Press,[280][281] Details,[282] Mojo,[l] Musician,[291][292] NME,[293] Rolling Stone,[55] and Vanity Fair.[294][295][62] He has also written several articles about football (soccer), as an avid and knowledgeable fan, for the Times of London.[296][297][298] A Vanity Fair editor who worked with Costello said, "His copy was clean, elegant, and ready to run."[299]
Costello has written liner notes for releases by artists including Gram Parsons,[300] the Fairfield Four,[301] Dusty Springfield,[302] Booker T. & the M.G.'s,[303] Burt Bacharach,[304] and Bill Frisell.[305] He has written forewords to books by Geoff Emerick,[306] Loretta Lynn,[307] and Wanda Jackson.[308]
In 1993, Costello began reissuing his catalog of albums from 1977 through 1986, on Rykodisc, and wrote detailed liner notes for each reissued album. Reviewers praised these liner notes as frank and charming.[309][310] In 2001, he began a second round of reissues, this time of his catalog from 1977 through 1996, on Rhino Entertainment, and wrote even more detailed liner notes. Goldmine said the Rhino liner notes brought "a wealth of insight into the songs and the creative process itself" and that "liner notes simply don't get any better than this."[311] Pitchfork called them "truly fascinating."[312] Several journalists noted that, at a total of 60,000 words, the Rhino liner notes amounted to a serialized memoir.[313][217][314] In 2012, Slate magazine published a book review of the Rhino liner notes in which it called them "one of the best rock-star memoirs of the last decade."[314]
In 2015, Costello published Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, a memoir that had little overlap with his reissue liner notes.[315] In this book, Costello recounted his life in music and traced parallels between his own experiences and those of his father and grandfather, both of whom were musicians.[316] The book received enthusiastic positive reviews from prominent publications. The New York Times said it contained "some of the best writing – funny, strange, spiteful, anguished – we've ever had from an important musician."[317] The Washington Post praised it as having more in common with Frank McCourt's memoir Angela's Ashes than Mötley Crüe's The Dirt and said it was more enjoyable than Keith Richards' Life and Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One.[318] However, some positive reviews noted that the quality of the writing in the book was uneven and that the book might have been improved by being shorter, more focused thematically, or both.[317][316] The few negative reviews the book received criticized its nonlinear structure, its relative lack of emphasis on Costello's pop-star period, and its lack of details about his romantic relationships.[319] The book reached number 7 on the New York Times Best Seller list.[320] It was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize, a British award for excellence in writing about music.[321] The audiobook, narrated by Costello, was nominated for a Grammy Award.[322]
Acting and television presenting[edit]
Costello has played himself or fictional characters very similar to himself in movies and television shows including Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999),[323] The Simpsons (2002),[324] Frasier (2003),[325] Two and a Half Men (2004),[326] 30 Rock (2009),[327] Treme (2010),[328] and Sesame Street (2011).[329] He has also played more character-based roles, such as the title character's eccentric brother in screenwriter Alan Bleasdale's television series Scully (1984), an inept magician in Bleasdale's movie No Surrender (1985), a teacher at an impoverished school in the movie Prison Song (2001), and the title character's father in the children's animated series The Adventures of Pete the Cat (2017).[330] In 1995, he appeared as a guest pundit on the British football commentary television show Football Italia.[298][331]
In 2003, Costello substituted for an ailing David Letterman as the host of Late Show with David Letterman'', making him the only musical guest of the show to have served as guest host.[332] Costello's performance on that show led to interest in developing a music-oriented talk show with him as the host, which came to fruition a few years later.[333][334]
In 2008, Costello began production on Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., a show on which he interviewed and performed songs with other musicians.[335] Guests included Tony Bennett, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Bono and the Edge of U2, opera singer Renée Fleming, and former president (and accomplished saxophonist) Bill Clinton.[336] The series ran for 20 episodes over two seasons from 2008 through 2010.[337] It aired on Sundance Channel in the US, CTV in Canada, and Channel 4 in the UK.[338] The show received favourable reviews in the US, with reviewers praising Costello's ability to get his guests to reveal insights into their creative processes and calling him a "deeply knowledgeable, erudite and witty host."[339][340][336] In Canada, the show won a Gemini Award for Best Talk Series.[341] In Britain, however, it was aired in an overnight time slot and largely ignored.[22][333]
Legacy[edit]
Costello is considered by experts in pop and rock music to be one of the best songwriters of his generation. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic summarized Costello as, "The most evocative, innovative, and gifted songwriter since Bob Dylan, with songs that offer highly personal takes on love and politics."[383] In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him 24th their list of the greatest songwriters of all time, calling him a songwriter of "almost unparalleled versatility."[384] When he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016, the induction announcement said the impact of Costello's songs "far out-distanced their commercial performance."[385]
Costello's debut album, My Aim Is True, is widely considered one of the best debut albums in the history of rock music.[386][387] On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the album's release, Billboard called it "one of the most influential albums in the history of rock and punk" and "one of the strongest debut albums in history".[388] Although Costello never applied the term "new wave" to his music,[56] Costello's early records helped defined the new wave music genre. AllMusic said, "Costello's early albums changed the face of pop music by harnessing punk's energy to a leaner, more incisive aesthetic that included pop hooks, virtually inventing new wave in the process."[389] In their 2013 list of greatest albums of all time, the NME described This Year's Model as "defining the British new wave."[390] In their 2009 list of greatest albums of all time, Rolling Stone said "the keyboard-driven sound of [Costello's 1979 song] 'Accidents Will Happen' helped define New Wave."[391]
Musical artists with little connection to new wave have also claimed influence by Costello. Bruce Springsteen has said that comments Costello made in the press criticizing Springsteen's early songs as overly romantic led Springsteen to write darker songs for his 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town.[392] Thom Yorke called Blood & Chocolate "the album that made me change the way I thought about recording and writing music [and] lyrics" and named it as an important influence on his band Radiohead's album OK Computer.[393] Liz Phair, in her appreciation of Costello for Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, wrote: "I'd pay a great amount of money to audit a course taught by him."[394] Suzanne Vega has called Costello one of the "melodic geniuses" whose music she listens to in order to "stretch my sense of melody."[395]
Prominent artists in other fields have claimed influence or inspiration from Costello. Filmmaker and comedian Judd Apatow has called Costello "a gigantic inspiration to me" and has suggested that he and other comedians are "fanatical" about Costello's music because of the "spirit of standing up for what you believe in and the humor" in it.[396] Satirist and television host Stephen Colbert has described Costello as "probably my favourite rock artist" and said he sees parallels between his own humor and Costello's "wry, sardonic" songs.[397] Novelist Bret Easton Ellis titled his 1985 novel Less Than Zero after a Costello song and its 2010 sequel Imperial Bedrooms after a Costello album. Ellis has said Costello was once his "idol".[398][399] Visual artist Peter Blake featured Costello prominently in his 2012 reworking of the artwork he created for the cover of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blake said he included people he admired and who had contributed to British culture since he created the original work.[400]
