Elvis is King: Costello's My Aim Is True by Richard Crouse

Author:Richard Crouse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: music, pop culture, rock n roll
ISBN: 9781770906600
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2015-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

6

Songs of Revenge and Guilt

Listening to My Aim Is True today, turned up loud for 34 minutes of audio bliss, can be a dizzying experience … In 1978, however, it was positively vertigo inducing.

Played front to back, it’s a marvel of songwriting and of performance; a greatest-hits album with only two bona fide hits. Sprung from the punk era, it is at once completely of its time and timeless — a blast of venom, bitterness, and aching heartbreak from a singer-songwriter who struggled to find a voice, who faced rejection, and who ultimately poured all he had into 13 songs. He sings like a man on fire, wrapping his tongue around twisty turns of phrase, emphasizing musical hooks so large they could land a Great White, and emoting like his life depended on it. Maybe it did. His musical life, anyway.

In the process, Elvis Costello unwittingly redefined the stereotype of the mawkish singer-songwriter, shaving off any soft edges to reveal a spiky, discontented underbelly. As writer Matt LeMay noted, “Punks didn’t give a fuck; Elvis was sensitive enough to not only give a fuck, but smart enough to be pissed off and disturbed by that fuck.” The spiritual father of cranky singer-songwriters Peter Case, Paul Collins, and Paul Westerberg, Elvis heralded an edgy sound with sophisticated lyrics that made the sensitive smooth acoustic pop of Paul Simon and James Taylor sound as current as medieval folk tunes.

Dripping with sarcasm and bitterness, My Aim Is True’s lyrics never feel gratuitous, however. The anger, doubt, and self-pity appear genuine, not as posturing. My Aim Is True captures the raw power of Elvis’s inner rage in a way that his later records haven’t. Elvis’s anger took on larger targets in the coming years — “Tramp the Dirt Down,” for example, was dedicated to Margaret Thatcher — but on this disc, he’s dissatisfied with his life and disappointed by those around him, many of whom are women.

As a result, some of the anti-romance lyrics have been labeled misogynist. It’s a fair charge. There is a lot of bile woven into the lyrics, much of it directed at a second person, the “you,” but there is also a great deal of dark humor that tempers the vitriol. In “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes,” he sings about being so happy he could die, only to have the woman reply, “Drop dead,” and leave with another guy. In addition to being a clever piece of wordplay, it’s also a great heart-on-his-sleeve line that speaks to the vulnerability of the narrator. “Joy is fleeting” seems to be Costello’s overarching message here and in most of My Aim Is True’s songs; feelings of personal inadequacy get in the way of happiness and true love. The joke is on him, and it has left him embittered.

The brashness of the songs, coupled with Costello’s unadulterated nastiness, cynical humor, and razor-sharp social commentary, wrongly got him lumped in with the punk movement. Punk valued the filth and the fury as

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