“Beyond Belief” by Elvis Costello & the Attractions

Elvis Costello never put "Beyond Belief" out as a single, yet the Imperial Bedroom track he cut with the Attractions keeps resurfacing on his compilations and in his live sets, critics rave about it, and his fans simply won't let it go. It grew out of an older Costello song, "The Land of Give and Take", and he built it with one eye on the wide, echoing sound U2 and Echo and the Bunnymen were making at the time.

The words came last, a frantic rush of them written over a backing track already in the can, and Costello has admitted he was deliberately writing lines that didn't add up, a smeared picture of a smeared life. Pete Thomas, nursing a hangover, drums like a man trying to outrun it, and the whole thing churns with a bleary, feverish energy.

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