The Random iTunes Man is going all theme weekend on me.
Here’s another track from Elvis Costello, this time from the excellent Get Happy!!. Listening to it has me thinking I ranked this album too low on my list of favorite 80s records. Isn’t that always the case? Whatever you’re enjoying in the moment feels like the best thing ever, until you move on to the next thing.
That’s what makes lists kind of ridiculous. Of course it’s never stopped me from obsessively compiling them.
Elvis Costello has written so many songs that I’m sure not even he can keep up with them.
Indeed, in the liner notes for the reissue of Mighty Like a Rose, he admits that he forgot about this existence of today’s SOTD until it came up in a search of material from the recording sessions.
‘Just Another Mystery’ isn’t among Costello’s finest songs, by any means, but can you imagine creating something as fully realized as this and then just forgetting about it? He probably wrote three equally good songs the same day.
Pink Floyd is the quintessential 70s band but for me they will always represent the late 80s. That’s when I, along with my group of high school friends, obsessed over all of their albums the way teenage boys have for 40 years now.
Dark Side of the Moon is the band’s signature album, one that remained on the Billboard charts for a record 741 weeks. Its iconic cover art is familiar even to those who’ve never heard a note. And those who’ve heard it have likely fallen under its spell.
Elvis Costello landed three albums on my 80s list, two in the top six. That was definitely his defining decade. But He made a pretty strong impression in the last few years of the 70s as well.
While his second and third albums, This Year’s Model and Armed Forces, won’t appear on this list, they contain some excellent work. But I’m most drawn to Costello’s debut album, My Aim is True, which announced his singular talent through a megaphone.
I’ve never understood why Billy Joel gets such a bad rap. Just the other day I happened upon a Slate article titled ‘The Worst Pop Singer Ever: Why, Exactly is Bill Joel So Bad?’
That’s the sort of garbage that only gets written about artists who are beloved by “the masses” and therefore un-hip.
