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Elvis Costello is a genius of contemporary popular music; he may well be the most talented person in the music industry.
I don't think that I will ever forgive him for it.
Rather than focus on his brilliant new album Get Happy!, I would like to examine the effect that his brand of new wave music has had on rock 'n' roll so far, and the effects it may have in the future.
When new wave music began, it appeared to be just another hype foisted upon the public by the music industry — punk rock without Johnny Rotten or safety pins through the cheek.
Costello, because of his great talent, has to a large extent legitimized new wave music, helping to make it acceptable to the public and establishing it as the most popular fad in rock 'n' roll today.
Costello embodies the new wave stereotype. He poses as a neurotic, slightly paranoid adolescent. His lyrics can only be described as sullen. His music is oversimplified and repetitive.
His songs have the standard new wave arrangements: the guitarist plays three chords on the bottom two strings of his guitar; the organist dominates the sound, playing one of an infinite number of variations on "Land of the Thousand Dances;" the drummer bangs his snare drum on two and four, if he bothers to do even that much.
Yet for Costello it all works. The neurotic pose and the grinding music are justified by the success of his amazing lyrics.
Costello's lyrics create a sense of alienation and persecution that rivals anything I have heard since Bob Dylan recorded Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Yet Costello is always subtle in his treatment of such themes. The new album's "Secondary Modern," for example, describes a person who feels as if he is "second place in the human race" by concealing the pain of a broken love affair and a dead-end life in the understated last line: "it won't be a problem till the girls go home."
The skill with which Costello has justified his persona and his music has endeared him to rock critics and has inspired many musicians to imitate his style.
Most of the new wave music gaining popularity today, however, has all of Costello's vices and none of his virtues.
All of Costello's musical defects seem to be required credentials for the most popular new wave and power pop groups. The one-take recording style of The Knack insures sloppiness rather than spontaneity. The group's drummer seems to miss the beat at least three times in every song. The Police seem to consider it a virtue to sing off-key.
Other "artists" imitate Costello's neurotic pose, without success. Joe Jackson, the most obvious of the Costello sound-alikes, lacks Costello's lyrical gift, but retains his whininess in such songs as "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" At the other extreme, Gary Numan carries Costello's paranoia to a ridiculous degree, singing songs about feeling safe only when locked inside a car.
Worse still, the new wave fad is causing other artists to modify their styles to fit its demands. Linda Ronstadt and J. Geils Band have been the first casualties of a style that is wholly inappropriate for them.
The problem is not that new wave music itself is bad; too much of the work of Costello and a few others has been too good to suggest that. New wave is, however, an extremely limited, idiosyncratic type of pop music. It is suitable only for a few artists. Unfortunately, new wave seems to be the direction in which all of rock 'n' roll is going. Rock critic Nik Cohn's comments about another group are appropriate to describe the effect Costello's music is now having: "This boy has talent; he may be the ruin of us all."
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