I’m beginning to think I should have been a bigger fan of Elvis Costello over the years. I bought, or was given to be more precise, the Oliver’s Army (one of my favourite three songs of his) single when it came out, but that was the only record of his I owned until I bought the Mighty Like a Rose CD in 1991. That one’s a patchy album, but not as bad as the bottom position it usually occupies when Costello fans rank his albums. All Grown Up from that album’s another of my three favourite songs.
After this I bought a greatest hits CD and over the years I bought his first few and Imperial Bedroom, the latter being the one that was played the most (Man Out of Time – the third of my top three Costello songs). I downloaded all the others some time back and had begun to think I had been overlooking him last year after listening to a couple of them whilst ploughing on with my project, so I went through them all and ended up buying another dozen, quite cheaply, on CD.
But then this year he released The Boy Named If. It is absolutely superb. I bought the CD straight away and it made me relisten to all the CDs again. I’ve definitely been missing out here. So many great albums that I barely knew – King of America, Almost Blue, Trust, Brutal Youth, Blood and Chocolate, When I was Cruel, Punch the Clock, Get Happy!!, Painted From Memory, even Look Now from a few years ago. I should have been listening to this lot for years. It’s the same feeling as when I finally got round to listening to Prince’s post-80s stuff and learned that it wasn’t all rubbish, as many would have you believe, but in Costello’s case I actually had copies, albeit downloaded, of all these albums for years, without ever really listening to them. It makes me wonder how many more great artists are hiding in plain sight in my record collection.
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