Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello was born Declan MacManus in Paddington in 1954, and his recording career took off just as punk was tearing through England. He'd grown up in a musical family, raised on a wide spread of styles and handed an insider's view of the record business early on. With punk making a virtue of knowing nothing, he kept all that learning under his hat and let the bile do the talking.

My Aim Is True didn't give him a single hit, but it held "Alison", a ballad of bruised tenderness that became one of his best-known songs. For most of his early years the Attractions backed him, and the records got faster and meaner. This Year's Model in 1978 and Armed Forces in 1979 practically drew the blueprint for new wave: nervy, needling, and packed with lyrics that stacked puns three deep and dared you to untangle them. "Pump It Up" twitched like a man on too much coffee, "Oliver's Army" became his biggest hit at home, and his take on Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding", a tune Brinsley Schwarz had left in the dustbin, came out sounding like a manifesto.

The critics never stopped paying attention. This Year's Model and Imperial Bedroom, from 1982, each topped a major critics' poll for their year, even as America stayed only half convinced. "Veronica", in 1989, finally gave him his biggest hit there. His range kept widening to take in country, jazz, baroque pop and classical music, and he never stopped roaming: records with the Brodsky Quartet, with Allen Toussaint and with the Roots, a pile of songs written alongside Paul McCartney, a long partnership with Burt Bacharach. Linda Ronstadt, George Jones, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash all went looking for his songs.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 2003. He hosted a television show interviewing fellow musicians, Spectacle, wrote a memoir called Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, and in 2019 picked up both an Americana award for his songwriting and an OBE. The angry young man turned out to be a lifer.

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