Armed Forces by Elvis Costello & the Attractions

Armed Forces, Elvis Costello's third album and his second with the Attractions, hit British shops on Radar Records on 5 January 1979, and it's the record where the angry young man decided he wanted a hit as badly as he wanted a fight. Steve Nieve on keys, Bruce Thomas on bass and Pete Thomas on drums (no relation) got their name on the front this time, and they earned it. Nick Lowe produced the six-week London sessions in the late summer of 1978, but Costello grabbed more of the wheel than he had on This Year's Model, and Nieve's keyboards shaped the arrangements more than ever.

The punk sneer is still in there, only now it wears a shiny pop suit. The working title was Emotional Fascism, and that tells you where the songs live: politics seeping into bedrooms, power games played out between lovers, all of it set to hooks so bright you could miss the poison. "Oliver's Army" bounces like a hit and bites like a pamphlet; "Accidents Will Happen" arrives with a shrug and a wince; "Goon Squad" and "Green Shirt" stalk the edges.

The British edition came in an elaborate fold-out sleeve with a herd of elephants on the cover, while Columbia's American version got a simpler drip design and swapped "Sunday's Best" for Costello's take on Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding". It climbed to number two at home, his biggest seller up to then, and critics put it on their lists of the year's best. The band took it across America on the Armed Funk tour, and the record's reputation has only grown since, down to a super deluxe reissue in 2020.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.