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Elvis is on top at the movies.
Elvis Costello, that is. The singersongwriter is featured prominently in two of last weekend's three top-grossing movies, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Notting Hill (the third was the Star Wars prequel).
In Powers, Costello appears with Burt Bacharach, performing "I'll Never Fall in Love Again." Costello's performance of "She" is heard at the start and close of Notting Hill.
"It's a curious thing to find myself in these two movies at the same time," Costello says.
"I'll be a movie-buff trivia-quiz question for the rest of my life.
"These are both songs that I probably never would have covered had it not been for these occasions."
(Bill Withers might join him in trivia history. Withers co-wrote "Just the Two of Us," which Mike Myers sings and raps as Dr. Evil in Shagged; Withers wrote and sang "Ain't No Sunshine," a 1972 hit on the Notting Hill soundtrack.)
The Island label plans to release "She" as a single; a music video has been shot and is being edited.
Though Costello is best known for singing his own often-acerbic material, he did not write either song. "Love" was written by Bacharach and Hal David and was a hit three decades back for both Tom Jones and Dionne Warwick.
"She," almost unknown in the United States, was a British No. 1 in 1974 for Charles Aznavour, who wrote it with Herbert Kretzmer. Both are pop ballads, another form not associated with Costello, who rose to fame in the late 1970s as an apparently angry young man in the wake of the punk revolution.
"Grown men weeping and women throwing roses: That's the kind of scenario I've been looking for," says Costello, who performs a fair number of romantic songs in his current set on tour with his longtime keyboard player, Steve Nieve.
Powers star Myers, who featured Bacharach in the first Powers movie, invited the songwriter back to appear with Costello in the sequel because the duo had just recorded the collaborative album Painted From Memory.
Costello enjoyed wearing Engelbert Humperdinck-style sideburns and shooting the song on a huge set re-creating London's colorful '60s fashion center Carnaby Street.
He and Bacharach play cafe entertainers serenading Myers and Heather Graham.
Costello's performance in Notting Hill was more off-the-cuff. Aznavour's version had bombed with American test audiences.
"Nobody could understand what poor Charles was singing because he has such a strong accent," Costello says. "Next thing you know, I got a call."
Costello recorded the song with the London Symphony Orchestra; it is used to set up the premise of the film, putting star Julia Roberts on a pedestal as an unattainable movie star.
"Because I knew Charles Aznavour's version so well, I started to sing it with a French accent," Costello says. "I sounded like Peter Sellers or something." After several takes, he sounded less like Clouseau and more like Costello.
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