Elvis Costello has collaborated with a boatload of artists over the years. He’s written songs with Paul McCartney, Aimee Mann, Burt Bacharach and Loretta Lynn, to name a few. A few years back, he wrote a song with Kris Kristofferson and Rosanne Cash and the trio planned to cut an album together, though that didn’t come to pass (at least not yet).

I like that an artist as prolific and excellent as Costello makes the time to write with other musicians. He clearly doesn’t need to do it. His muse is on speed, he could write original material from now until the day he dies. But he must get something out of these collaborations — even if it’s just the pleasure of sharing a room with somebody whose work he admires.

Costello penned another track with Rosanne Cash that wound up on Momofuku. Its working title was, appropriately enough, ‘Song With Rose,’ and he liked that well enough to leave it in place on the album.

I’ve always wanted to be a fly on the wall during a collaborative songwriting session. I assume they’re all very different, from the ‘two rooms’ method of Elton John and Bernie Taupin (and Ben Folds and Nick Hornby) to the ‘jam until you come up with a song’ method of many bands.

Reading the lyrics to ‘Song With Rose,’ they sound very much like Costello’s words. Did Cash write the music? Did the inspiration for this track come to them together or separately? Why don’t they put out behind the scenes clips and commentary tracks on CDs the way they do on DVDs?