Tag Archives: Punch the Clock

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Song of the Day #5,265: ‘The Invisible Man’ – Elvis Costello

‘The Invisible Man’ is a track from Elvis Costello’s 1983 release Punch the Clock, his eighth studio album. Costello teamed up with pop producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley to deliver his most commercial album, hoping for chart success that had largely eluded him to that point.

It worked, to a degree. Punch the Clock was his best-selling album in several years and produced a modest international hit in ‘Everyday I Write the Book.’ That song became his first Top 40 single in the U.S., and one of only two in his entire career (bonus points to commenters who can name the second).

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Song of the Day #4,289: ‘Everyday I Write the Book’ – Elvis Costello and the Attractions

[Note: I am forgoing my usual April Fools’ Day post this year, in part because I’m in the middle of a Decades countdown and in part because the world seems to have turned into a giant, cruel prank without me needing to pile on.]

Elvis Costello’s Punch the Clock followed what may be his best album, Imperial Bedroom, by just a year, and in that context it can’t help but be a bit of a letdown. But it’s plenty good enough to land at #3 on my list of the best albums of 1983.

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Song of the Day #4,265: ‘The Flirting Kind’ – Elvis Costello

This Elvis Costello track shows up on one of the reissues of his 1983 album Punch the Clock.

It’s a testament to the depth of Costello’s catalog that a song this good can end up as a forgotten B-side, and also that after months of Costello Weekends, plenty of Random Weekend appearances, and a bunch of other Song of the Day posts, I still have to much great material of his to mine.

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Song of the Day #4,089: ‘Walking On Thin Ice’ – Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello and the Attractions recorded this cover of Yoko Ono’s ‘Walking On Thin Ice’ for a 1984 Yoko tribute album titled Every Man Has a Woman.

It was later released on Costello’s compilation Out of Our Idiot and finally on the reissue of Punch the Clock, where I first heard it. It’s pretty great.

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Song of the Day #885: ‘Pills and Soap’ – Elvis Costello

The second of the political songs on Elvis Costello’s Punch the Clock is a strange track toward the end of the album.

Costello has said that he got the inspiration for the sound of ‘Pills and Soap’ from the rap song ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel. He says of that single, “It was the first rap record that I had encountered that was anymore than an invitation to dance. It spoke about ugly life.”

Now it would have been interesting had Costello been inspired to actually rap on his own record, but alas, we were deprived of (or spared) that experience.

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