10.12.2018
ELVIS COSTELLO: ‘I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE LIONEL RICHIE – BUT HEARTFELT LOVE SONGS JUST AREN’T WHAT I DO’
Independent: Roisin O’Connor: 11th October 2018
The English singer-songwriter speaks about his new record ‘Look Now’, a ‘dramatised’ cancer operation, and why he’s unlikely to retire any of his more controversial tracks in the Time’s Up eraElvis Costello turned on the television one night – enjoying a quiet evening after dinner with his eldest son – only to find a singer on a new reality show doing a terrible impression… of him. He thought he was hallucinating.
“I couldn’t believe it!” he says, settled in an armchair at his London hotel. He’s wearing trendy, tinted lenses, rather than the thick black frames he’s more often associated with. “For one thing I don’t think of myself as being mainstream enough for that kind of light TV. And the impersonation was terrible, it sounded like Bluebottle from The Goon Show…”
That’s your answer, the 64-year-old chuckles, to why artists like him and Paul McCartney keep moving forwards. To try to stop people from doing those terrible impressions.
His new album Look Now is arguably one of his best, out of a catalogue spanning 25 records with the Attractions and the Imposters, plus a cluster of collaborative albums with artists including The Roots, Richard Harvey and Allen Toussaint. It features tracks starring his longtime collaborator Burt Bacharach on the piano, and one – “Burnt Sugar is So Bitter” – written with Carole King on one Dublin afternoon, decades ago but only recorded this year.