Top 885 Artists-Number 3-Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello is one of the more recognizable faces in pop music over the last 30 years. It's kind of hard to miss those big glasses after all. He's performed with Burt Bacharach in an Austin Powers movie. And he's married to jazz singer Diana Krall as well. But there's so much more.


Elvis Costello is one of the first artists I associated with the New Wave, but I soon learned that his music and style were a lot more complex. He didn't really fit in with Television, the New York Dolls, or other acts of the time. And over the years, his music has been all over the place, from ska lite to R&B, to post-punk pop, to classical, and, to jazzy ballads. He's collaborated with Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Brian Eno, Chet Baker, Allen Toussaint, Lucinda Williams, and the Brodsky Quartet. But probably my favorite record of his, even more than Blood and Chocolate, was Almost Blue. He rips through a fine selection of country music covers, from Hank Williams' "Why Don't You Love Me" to Merle Haggard's "Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down", and Gram Parsons' "How Much I Lied". He captures what makes real country music so great: the weepy ballads, and jumpin' honky-tonk.