Tag Archives: Elvis Costello

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Song of the Day #1,412: ‘(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes’ – Elvis Costello

Best Albums of the 70s – #17
My Aim is True – Elvis Costello (1977)

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.

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Song of the Day #1,405: ‘Shabby Doll’ – Elvis Costello

Best Albums of the 80s – #2
Imperial Bedroom – Elvis Costello (1982)

The third Elvis Costello album on this list is the one that blew my mind out in a car, to quote a song from a famous album engineered by Geoff Emerick, who handled production duties on this baroque masterpiece.

Yes, Imperial Bedroom is Elvis Costello’s Sgt. Pepper, bursting with creative energy and utilizing every trick in the studio playbook. It’s an acid trip and a carnival ride and a damn fine collection of songs to boot.

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Song of the Day #1,399: ‘Brilliant Mistake’ – Elvis Costello

Best Albums of the 80s – #6
King of America – Elvis Costello (1986)

ELvis Costello’s King of America was the second album I received from my sister and her future husband for my high school graduation (the first, you may recall, was Michael Penn’s March).

Talk about a gift that kept on giving.

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Song of the Day #1,392: ‘Secondary Modern’ – Elvis Costello

Best Albums of the 80s – #11
Get Happy!! – Elvis Costello (1980)

Elvis Costello makes his first appearance on this list at #11, but trust me, it won’t be his last. The 80s proved to be the man’s strongest decade by far.

Get Happy!!, Costello’s fourth album, typified the sort of stylistic shifts he had already made on his early records and continues to make to this day. Having explored punk and new wave (filtered, as always, through his own cerebral sensibility) on This Year’s Model and Armed Forces, he turned his attention to R&B.

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Song of the Day #1,386: ‘Clowntime is Over’ – Elvis Costello

I wondered how long it would take the Random iTunes Man to settle on an Elvis Costello song.

I have 536 songs performed and/or written by Elvis Costello in my iTunes collection, even more than the 520-something I have by Bob Dylan. You’d think that those two would pop up with some regularity. But through three and a half months of Random Weekends, each of them has come up only once.

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