New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool", on Oscar longlist

Pretty self-explanatory
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Fishfinger king »

Just bought it on iTunes. Hope a 7" single will follow - you never know.
It's a decent enough big ballad; no God Give Me Strength but 500% better than She.
Can't you see I'm trying to change this water to wine
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Miclewis »

I just bought the song on hdtracks.com; 24bit/88kHz.

I love the song; let’s Elvis gets a Oscar nomination/win next year.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Poor Deportee »

Good song. It's an effortlessly accomplished proposition, with some real feeling in some of those lines about time being an enemy, being unable to face your own reflection, etc.. EC knows enough about self-loathing for this stuff to ring true.

I'd prefer a less elaborate production, without the strings, etc.. A matter of taste I suppose.

Being more polished and straightforward than exhilarating or surprising, the song ultimately isn't exciting enough to stand alone as a "single" in the classic sense of that term. I'd like to hear it set within the context of an entire album that gives us some indication of the current state of Elvis's muse - not that that appears to be forthcoming from Mr. Semi-Retired.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by verbal gymnastics »

Perhaps the version without the strings will be on the b-side of the 7" single :lol:
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Neil. »

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if this a precursor to a new Imposters album.

In other news, it's had zero plays on BBC radio so far (at the time of writing - noon on Monday 13 Nov) - check his BBC homepage:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/8a3 ... 0ba#tracks

Not surprising, cos he's not on the Radio 2 playlist:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/playlist

So the only hope for our Elv is if fans like Jeremy Vine play it, or Elaine Page plays it next Sunday to tie in with the actual film opening (she plays songs from musicals and movies).

Could its exclusion from the Radio 2 playlist be something to do with its long intro? Interesting article about intros dying because of the skippability of tracks these days:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41500692
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by sheeptotheslaughter »

Did Sparkling day get much radio play here? I did hear it on the radio one Saturday morning about 6.20 on radio 2. But I don't remember hearing it again.

He could certainly do with maybe a bit of TV coverage, Strictly perhaps on the Sunday results show. 1. He's a friend of the show having sent Jeremy Vine a message when he was on there. 2. He cant be any worse than Seal was last night. Absolutely destroying Autumn Leaves.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Neil. »

No, I don't think Sparkling Day got much publicity, and that film was widely panned. But this Liverpool film seems to be getting pretty good reviews and Oscar buzz for Annette. Perhaps he may be in with a chance for an Oscar nom himself!
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Harry Lime »

Neil. wrote:
jardine wrote: Are you fitting in [?], or are you teasing?

Should a glance from you just see through me?

Time, among all of your enemies
Makes the sky [ ] gravity
"Are you fitting in [?], or are you teasing?" - I think it's Are you pitying, are you teasing?

"Should a glance from you just see through me?" - I think it's Should a glance from you just shoot through me?

"Makes the sky [ ] gravity" - I can't make this one out properly - could it be Makes disguises from drastic remedies
Elvis' Facebook page has the lyrics:

'You Shouldn’t Look At Me That Way’
Am I fine?
Am I pleasing?
Are you pitying?
Are you teasing?
You shouldn't look at me
You shouldn't look at me that way

Should a glance from you just shoot through me
If a glimpse of you could undo me
You shouldn't look at me
You shouldn't look at me that way

Time, among all your enemies,
Leaves nothing but bitter memories
From the first blush of affection
To avoiding your reflection
You shouldn't look at me
You shouldn't look at me that way

Now the flashbulbs may dazzle
While you're figuring out this puzzle
You shouldn't look at me
You shouldn't look at me that way

Don't take more than I offer
No, my love, or I'll make you suffer
You shouldn't look at me
You shouldn't look at me that way

Time, among all your enemies,
Makes disguises from drastic remedies
From the first brush with perfection
To avoiding your own reflection
You shouldn't look at me
You shouldn't look at me that way
Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by johnfoyle »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vQ1yxFkMQI

Elvis Costello performs live at the afterparty for the FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL screening at AFI FEST 2017, introduced by Annette Bening and Jamie Bell, and accompanied for one song by Neil Larsen, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Sunday, November 12, 2017
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by jardine »

Watching that video, I thought of how Elvis and Diana could get into a studio and he could quickly record all these new tunes that are floating around. Even a sort of live in the studio kind of thing (with a video). I can imagine how wonderful her piano elaborations/improv would be cool. Even video it as well.

daydreaming.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by verbal gymnastics »

Thanks for posting this lovely obscurity.
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Poor Deportee »

Elvis has many options. He could just record some demos and release them to the internet, or sell them as singles on iTunes. This would mitigate any concerns over losing money on cutting records. He could, as you suggest, record some new stuff in a live setting and release it to the world. He could go into the studio and cut songs in the proper, old-fashioned way. Hell, he could even have someone else record his new songs as a sort of perverse experiment (a la Wendy James, only done properly).

To this point, anyway, he seems interested in none of these.

I think it's really too bad. For my money, if we divide EC's career into two basic acts - first, the young demented EC who morphed into a more worldly-wise version of the Avenging Dork before expiring with Blood and Chocolate; second, the earnest scholastic who subsumed his distinctive lyrical propensities under the rigours of form and deferential collaboration with his seniors, tried stretching his voice like crazy, and turned in some middling-to-mediocre 'returns' to his rock and roll/pop roots (the drab ATUB, the wretched WIWC, the merely adequate Momofuku)- I felt that NR and WUG pointed to a third act. This was an EC who contained effortlessly within himself all the lessons of the sometimes-painful second act, but had surrendered some of the formalism and the straining: a performer with the chops to do almost anything he wanted, musically and lyrically, and was now relaxed and confident in that knowledge. Yet it was at this moment that he basically stopped making new material. :?

I remember his interview with Joni Mitchell, where he urged her to record the new songs she'd been writing. A pity he's not disposed to take his own advice.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Jack of All Parades »

I am with you on that 'third act' thought. Seven years ago he was seemingly poised to fully exploit his significant musical talents; a lifetime in a musician's creative life. "National Ransom" was a treasure trove of song craft. That it 'withered and died' within weeks of its release had to be soul crushing for this artist. His youthful pugnacity has shrunken over time to an elder statesman's pose of equanimity and familial docility. I never thought I would say this but I want that churlish, take on all comers personage back in some form. If only because it might startle the aging artist within him and awaken that 'third act' with renewed public production that exploits the varied new forms of distribution available today.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Top balcony »

So what's the film like?

I pretty much agree with The Guardian's assessment : https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/s ... ia-grahame

Although I'd give it 6 out of 5 for the end-to-end Liverpool footage and Scouse accents, plus the gratuitous Everton bit :D

Great soundtrack too, inc snippet of 'Pump it UP'. Elvis' new song sounds great over the credits. Sorry, but I don't think that his 'acting' and 'dancing' in the video work, although the Liverpool Playhouse stage plays a significant part in the movie so there is some logic to this setting being utilised.

I'd recommend that you see it on a big screen!

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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by cwr »

I think EC's "third act" as a recording artist was the Universal Years plus his 2 LPs for Hear Music, ending with NR.

I think we are in the Epilogue now. Unless something changes, we are in the part where he only makes records when someone else makes it happen, but never because he himself is itching to make another record. Films & TV shows, or projects initiated by other artists like The Roots or New Basement Tapes. Basically, give him a budget and he will make a record.

I hope he gets the itch again at some point. I'd love to be proven wrong. Especially since we live in an era where he could literally record 10 songs on his cell phone and post them to the internet in an evening of he wanted to.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by FAVEHOUR »

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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by verbal gymnastics »

cwr wrote:I think we are in the Epilogue now. Unless something changes, we are in the part where he only makes records when someone else makes it happen, but never because he himself is itching to make another record. Films & TV shows, or projects initiated by other artists like The Roots or New Basement Tapes. Basically, give him a budget and he will make a record.
I wholeheartedly agree.

Prove us wrong please Elvis.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Fishfinger king »

verbal gymnastics wrote:Perhaps the version without the strings will be on the b-side of the 7" single :lol:
You'd hope it might be The Last Days Of My Youth but more likely to be Pump It Up, as it's on the soundtrack, or not happen at all.
cwr wrote: Unless something changes, we are in the part where he only makes records when someone else makes it happen, but never because he himself is itching to make another record. Films & TV shows, or projects initiated by other artists like The Roots or New Basement Tapes. Basically, give him a budget and he will make a record.
Perhaps we should crowd-fund a new album then? How much would it take?
Top balcony wrote:So what's the film like?

I pretty much agree with The Guardian's assessment : https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/s ... ia-grahame

Although I'd give it 6 out of 5 for the end-to-end Liverpool footage and Scouse accents, plus the gratuitous Everton bit :D
Saw the film via a freebie giveaway last night in Norwich. Very well made, well acted and great score. Fishfinger Queen in floods of tears at end. A film to admire but a bit obvious how it was going to go. Particularly liked Stephen Graham's comedy wig but why did he not have the comedy early 80s Scouse tache a la Yosser/Souness? They missed a trick there.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Poor Deportee »

cwr wrote:I think EC's "third act" as a recording artist was the Universal Years plus his 2 LPs for Hear Music, ending with NR.

I think we are in the Epilogue now. Unless something changes, we are in the part where he only makes records when someone else makes it happen, but never because he himself is itching to make another record. Films & TV shows, or projects initiated by other artists like The Roots or New Basement Tapes. Basically, give him a budget and he will make a record.

I hope he gets the itch again at some point. I'd love to be proven wrong. Especially since we live in an era where he could literally record 10 songs on his cell phone and post them to the internet in an evening of he wanted to.
I fear that you're right. It's his business, but I personally find it annoying, since he seems to be creatively at the height of his powers, just not willing to put up with the bother of sharing them with the world. :evil:
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by sweetest punch »

https://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame ... hollywood/

Elvis Costello’s new muse is a forgotten Hollywood starlet

Elvis Costello has been a dedicated explorer of musical styles since his days as a founding father of punk and new wave in the late 1970s.

His 1998 album with Burt Bacharach, “Painted from Memory,” showed his versatility as a vocalist. Since then, he’s collaborated in a range of styles, from the experimental orchestra Metropole Orkest to the hip-hop group The Roots.

Costello's latest single is called “You Shouldn’t Look At Me That Way.” It's a song he composed for the movie, "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool.”

The film is based on Peter Turner's 1986 memoir of the same name. It’s about his relationship with an older woman — the eccentric actress Gloria Grahame, who starred in classic films like “The Big Heat” and “Oklahoma!” Annette Bening portrays Grahame in the film.

Costello was a fan of Grahame’s even before he was enlisted to compose a song for the film. When The Frame's John Horn met Costello at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood, he asked how this latest collaboration came about.

Interview Highlights:

On how he got involved with writing music for the film:

I had very coincidentally used a publicity still of Gloria in my show "Detour," which employed the prop of a giant television set that was located behind me. Barbara Broccoli, who produced this film, and Paul McGuigan, who directed it, come to the London Palladium to see my show. They're 20 minutes into the show and Gloria's picture [appears]. They must have thought I was a mind reader.

On what attracted him to the project:

One of the interesting things I responded to about this movie is the way in which we hold people in our memories in their most celebrated period. Then we forget that they're real people who live beyond that moment. And here in Peter Turner's memoir, it's not that [Grahame is] portrayed as an elderly woman. She's only in her early 50s. And here she is now in very different different circumstances, living in London in rented rooms. They're using the tagline from "Oklahoma!" as a way of identifying her for a theater audience. I think that's what attracted me to the story — when I read the script and when I saw the rough cut of the film — was how it makes the connection between the mythic Gloria and the real person.

On how he wrote the song:

When I saw the way Annette Bening portrayed that look of anger, where the look of seduction or affection that Peter was casting to her character, she realized that it could contain judgement and it offended her vanity. When the distance in their ages was pointed out, even when he did it as a joke — all these things were great clues to a songwriter. I don't want to make it sound easy, but the song kind of wrote itself in the sense that you only had to pay attention to what's going on between the characters and you have this tension that's in the emotion.

On the elements in "You Shouldn't Look at Me That Way" that were inspired by his work with Burt Bacharach:


I certainly learned a tremendous amount about what was possible with a ballad. I learned from the fact that he would sometimes combine unusual combinations of instruments to make a sound. So flugelhorn, alto flute and bass clarinet play the motif in this song. Something that he would sometimes do would be to introduce a really unexpected dissonance. There is, in the second verse, a high counter melody [in the violins], which is a little unsettling. It comes where I'm singing, "Don't take more than I offer, all my love or I'll make you suffer." It feels like that's what music should do. It should hint at what that feeling is.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Neil. »

It's finally been played on BBC radio - The Sean Keavney show on 6 Music, Mon 20 Nov.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/8a3 ... 0ba#tracks
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by johnfoyle »

Beautiful, moving film. Perfect cast, a real ensemble effort. Annette Bening's central performance is just that but is all the more powerful for the subtlety of the tiniest roles that counterpoint it. The piano refrain from You Shouldn't Look At Me That Way is used repeatedly across a particularly effective sequence. Similarly Elton John's Song For Guy is also used to killer effect. A really sweet film.

Other aspects of the film might have seemed especially appealing to Elvis , when he saw the rough cut that inspired his composition. A sequence in a pub in Liverpool in 1981 shows posters for Labour candidates in the local elections that year. Britain was starting to feel the effects of the Thatcher administration, in power since 1979. These elections would prove a temporary setback for them, leading to a more concerted effort by the Iron Lady, engaging in policies that would ultimately lead to Elvis , in effect , exiling himself from his homeland. Memories of that brief time when it seemed that something else might be possible could seem rather poignant to Elvis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Ki ... ions,_1981
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by Neil. »

Agreed, John - a film with two stunning lead performances. I already knew Bening is terrific but I had no idea Jamie Bell is such a fantastic actor. I think the pacing of the middle gets draggy - too many shots of them lolling in bed - but it's worth sticking it out for the last third, which had me blubbing. There's a great cinematic storytelling decision that really ratchets up the emotion and heartbreak. I was a mess by the end of it.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by johnfoyle »

There are no plans at this point to release a soundtrack album for this film , according to the the director. His sister follows me on Twitter so I asked her to check and and she kindly did so. That could change if it goes on to get awards or does well in the U.S.. It would be great if it did , even if only as a download. As I commented the piano refrain from Elvis's song is used very effectively during a sequence. The soundtrack is credited to Josh Ralph and he was reported to be involved with the film in July 2016, while the film was being made. Elvis's involvement seems to have been prompted by the filmmakers seeing him in concert in London in May 2016. Given that Elvis has said he based his song on seeing a rough cut in , presumably, late 2016 it might be that he used the refrain that Josh had composed. The video was made in March 2017 so it done by then. Something similar happened with Elvis's song Sparkling Day, used in One Day (2011). Rachel Portman's score shares elements with Elvis's song. What came first in that case is also unclear.


http://thespaceuk.wordpress.com/2012/03 ... an-macrae/

March 1, 2012.

(extract)

For an Oscar winner, Rachel Portman, OBE, gives a first impression of pure personable warmth, both on and off stage. When asked by an audience member about working with musicians, she recounted being asked to work on a track with Elvis Costello for the film One Day: “I had nightmares about it, I was so worried I was going to mess it up”.
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Re: New Elvis song in "Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool"

Post by erey »

johnfoyle wrote:The soundtrack is credited to Josh Ralph and he was reported to be involved with the film in July 2016, while the film was being made. Elvis's involvement seems to have been prompted by the filmmakers seeing him in concert in London in May 2016. Given that Elvis has said he based his song on seeing a rough cut in , presumably, late 2016 it might be that he used the refrain that Josh had composed. The video was made in March 2017 so it done by then.
From this podcast interview with the director, it appears EC's melody was added to the middle of the movie: https://audioboom.com/posts/6493660-pre ... s-costello

McGuigan: "It's not only at the end of the movie, we actually used it -- Josh was very gracious about it, he said, 'That should be in the middle, because that's the real essence.'"
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