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Elvis Costello fans will get quite a surprise when his new album is released next week.
It's full of Country and Western ballads.
The secretive star who hates being photographed abandoned his own aggressive songs and flew to Nashville, Tennessee, to make the record.
Costello, 26, attributes the new style to his obsession with dying young.
He says: “It’s starting to take me over”.
“I don’t know why I’ve chosen to do so many sad songs. It’s a total contradiction when I’m happily married.”
“But I couldn’t have got the feeling I was aiming for with my own words.
“Country music is real because it’s about ordinary people’s lives.”
Costello explains his conversion to Country music in an ITV documentary that will be shown next month. A film crew followed him to Nashville for the recording session.
Costello wearing a bootlace tie with his more characteristic punk-inspired garb, is seen rubbing shoulders with guys in ten-gallon hats and listening to Country bands in Nashville bars.
Sound
And he has several arguments with producer Billy Sherrill about how the album should sound.
The programme contains film of Costello’s first live Country performance at a Country and Western club… in Aberdeen.
He said: “I decided to do it in front of people who know about Country music to see how it went down.”
The show was a hit.
Now the shy star is driving TV chiefs wild by refusing to pose for publicity pictures for the documentary.
So far Costello’s new sound doesn’t seem to have done him any harm.
His single, Good Year for the Roses, is from his new album and is number 14 in the charts.
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