Your Top 10 Favourite Elvis Costello Albums

[Unexpected No.4]

1 Mighty Like A Rose
2 Brutal Youth
3 Imperial Bedroom
4 Get Happy!
5 Punch The Clock
6 All This Useless Beauty
7 Trust
8 The Delivery Man
9 Momofuku
10 When I Was Cruel

[wardo68]

The Five:

Get Happy!!
Trust
Imperial Bedroom
King Of America
Blood & Chocolate

bubbling under:

This Years Model
Armed Forces
Mighty Like A Rose
The Juliet Letters
North

[bronxapostle]

been avoiding this VERY tough task....but, here goes:

01. GET HAPPY!!
02. KING OF AMERICA
03. THIS YEAR'S MODEL
04. BRUTAL YOUTH
05. MY AIM IS TRUE
06. MOMOFUKU
07. BLOOD & CHOCOLATE
08. ALL THIS USELESS BEAUTY
09. PAINTED FROM MEMORY
10. THE DELIVERY MAN

damn...hardest task EVER and definitely subject to change depending on the mood of the day! but, these are my USUAL candidates for desert island accompaniment. to leave out NORTH, ARMED FORCES, WHEN I WAS CRUEL, SECRET, PROFANE & SUGARCANE and IMPERIAL BEDROOM was indeed rough. and the next five i adore are: ALMOST BLUE, PUNCH THE CLOCK, NATIONAL RANSOM, SPIKE and TRUST! how's that for squeezing a top twenty into a top ten question.

[Jack of All Parades]

The Five:

Get Happy!!
Trust
Imperial Bedroom
King Of America
Blood & Chocolate

bubbling under:

This Years Model
Armed Forces
Mighty Like A Rose
The Juliet Letters
North

Glad to see I am in good company with the exception of MLAR. Your top five, I think, are a tough top act to follow. I can only count a handful of 'pop' artists with a comparable quality stretch of recordings. To perform on that level for that length of time always earns my admiration.

[Kevin Davis]

Kevin, that was an interesting post. I'd not previously thought of that period as characterized by weak writing in the sense you describe. What came to mind immediately was 'King of Thieves,' a song that always struck me as cluttered; maybe 'TKO' too. But I strain to find other clear-cut examples...'Pidgin English' maybe? Could you give some examples?

Sorry it took me so long to follow up on this. I've played all three of these albums this past week, wondering if maybe my memory had just been playing tricks on me in regards to this lasting impression I seem to have of them, and in a sense it has. For one, I remembered "Goodbye Cruel World" (not an album I play often apart from tracks 2-5) as being much more cluttered arrangement-wise than it is, when in reality a lot of the murk on that album seems to stem from engineering choices rather than the occasional instrumental overkill of "Punch the Clock." You can really hear the fatigued indifference in EC's singing on that record, and some of those melodies are just so busy as to require more commitment than the man was prepared to give. You can really hear the difference when you compare the "Deportee" and "Comedians" demos to the album versions: The demos sound like perfect pop songs; the album versions sound like messes of notes and words.

As for "IB," I think the songs in my mind were "Pidgin English," "Little Savage," and "You Little Fool." After listening again those feelings more or less stand. Something about the melodies in those songs just feel off--like, little bits of them make sense to me, and then the song just goes somewhere that seems completely foreign. "Little Savage" is a good example--I love the way it starts off: "I would have waited all my life/(backing vocals)/Just to make love out of something other than spite..." -- and then, compositionally, it kind of goes off into this mess of sound until it arrives at the chorus. I don't know, it just feels awkward to me. Same thing with "You Little Fool"--the songs just feel like they need more breathing room, which is the same thing I'd say about much of the material on Side B of "Punch the Clock." I think "And In Every Home" is probably the most noteworthy example of excess for its own sake; though I like the song, it reminds me of that "Frasier" episode where he's commissioned to compose a ten-second theme ditty for his radio program and he ends up writing a five-minute epic movement with a 100-piece orchestra. But hey, every artist should do that sort of thing at least once.

That said, just this week I listened to the Rhino "Punch the Clock" bonus disc for the first time and found some of those acoustic demos to be revelatory--especially "King of Thieves," "Heathen Town," and "The Flirting Kind." (And now I finally understand what "And No Coffee Table" means!) I like "Punch the Clock" well enough, and think some of the better songs are served well by the production ("Let Them All Talk," "Greatest Thing," "World And His Wife"), but overall I think the tunes come across better in a barer setting. The straight-up rock version of "Everyday I Write the Book" had me tapping my foot like crazy.

[Fishfinger king]

1 King of America
2 This Year's Model
3 Get Happy!
4 Blood and Chocolate
5 Imperial Bedroom
6 Brutal Youth
7 Trust
8 Momofuku
9 Painted from Memory
10 My Aim Is True

1-5 have been the top five is some order or other for a long time.
6-10 are a more variable feast. Surprised My Aim isn't more liked or is it just for us old ones who remember it coming out?
National Ransom came close.

[Poor Deportee]

I listened to SP & S in the car yesterday. I understand why people tend to hold their noses just a little when handling this album, but I remain as convinced as ever that IF you ignore its first half - just start in with 'I Dreamed of My Old Lover' - you have an unbroken and really very enjoyable sequence, right to the end. I'll grant that 'Red Cotton' plods on a bit; it needs to be sped up slightly (I'd have varispeeded it) and the writing toward the end drifts - it's a case where EC's research rather gets in his way - but the latter failing is substantially redeemed by the power of the final couplet. This reservation aside, you've got yourself a half-album of wonders. This sequence just takes you somewhere very rare in popular song, to some 19th century place of crumbling riverboats, slavery and civil war, repressed southern belles and lusty rakes, of dark operatic hymns and country dances. Even the songs with more modern references ('cellophane') remain somehow evocative of this lost time.

And beyond that, the sound is just so damned great - Elvis's melodies are tremendously suited to the lyrics here, his voice is rich and evocative if at times dodgily pitched, and the percussionless Sugarcanes offer him a rich sonic backdrop unlike any in his canon.

Maybe I'm nuts. But I'd urge those with lukewarm sentiments to this CD to take my advice and come in at song seven. It reveals a worthy most prelude to the more fully realized mastery of National Ransom.

[bronxapostle]

been avoiding this VERY tough task....but, here goes:

01. GET HAPPY!!
02. KING OF AMERICA
03. THIS YEAR'S MODEL
04. BRUTAL YOUTH
05. MY AIM IS TRUE
06. MOMOFUKU
07. BLOOD & CHOCOLATE
08. ALL THIS USELESS BEAUTY
09. PAINTED FROM MEMORY
10. THE DELIVERY MAN

damn...hardest task EVER and definitely subject to change depending on the mood of the day! but, these are my USUAL candidates for desert island accompaniment. to leave out NORTH, ARMED FORCES, WHEN I WAS CRUEL, SECRET, PROFANE & SUGARCANE and IMPERIAL BEDROOM was indeed rough. and the next five i adore are: ALMOST BLUE, PUNCH THE CLOCK, NATIONAL RANSOM, SPIKE and TRUST! how's that for squeezing a top twenty into a top ten question.

1 King of America
2 This Year's Model
3 Get Happy!
4 Blood and Chocolate
5 Imperial Bedroom
6 Brutal Youth
7 Trust
8 Momofuku
9 Painted from Memory
10 My Aim Is True

1-5 have been the top five is some order or other for a long time.
6-10 are a more variable feast. Surprised My Aim isn't more liked or is it just for us old ones who remember it coming out?
National Ransom came close.

WOW! dig US ffk! we have 8 of 10 the SAME, while our top three are IDENTICAL with slight variation in placement! and i must add, you are 100% correct about those of us there when MAIT was released. anyone of us (probably) who was a fan from the get go, with THIS as the ONLY one to work with, could NOT omit it from their top ten. it surely left the mark on us all that KNEW we would be listening to this man forever from just one that LP alone! UNDENIABLE GREATNESS! nice doing business with you ffk.