Born in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington in London, Costello is the son of trumpeter, vocalist and band-leader Ronald (“Ross”) MacManus and record store manager Lillian Costello. His family had roots in Merseyside and he moved to Birkenhead at age 16, with his mother, when his parents separated. While he is better known as 'Elvis Costello', a stage name referring to the legendary Elvis Presley suggested by Stiff Records manager Jake Riviera, he has used many other aliases, including 'The Imposter' and 'Napoleon Dynamite'.
In the early 1970s Costello was a participant in London's pub rock scene with the group Flip City. Then in 1977 along with fellow Pub-Rockers Nick Lowe and Ian Dury he made his first releases on the independent label Stiff, tailoring his work towards the burgeoning punk, power pop, and new wave scenes. From 1980's Armed Forces onwards, however, other influences including soul, country, 1960s pop, and classical music began to re-emerge, and he soon became established as a unique and original voice. His output has been wildly diverse: one critic has written that "Costello, the pop encyclopedia, can reinvent the past in his own image".
His prolific and varied 30-year career has been marked by two constants: sharp songwriting and musical restlessness. The latter has seen him dabble in almost every musical form, from country to jazz to orchestral. This stems from the fact that, at heart, Costello is a fan. His desire to work with his musical heroes has attracted collaborators as diverse as Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney, Anne Sofie von Otter, Allen Toussaint, Aimee Mann, Bill Frisell, and Brian Eno.
But his most successful partners were his long-term band The Attractions. They comprised Steve Nieve (keyboards), Pete Thomas (drums) and Bruce Thomas (bass). Between 1978 and 1983, this outfit produced a peerless series of albums: This Year's Model; Armed Forces; Get Happy!!; Almost Blue; Trust; Imperial Bedroom and Punch the Clock.
These recordings drew on styles spanning soul, country and western and commercial pop. It was only with 1984's Goodbye Cruel World that Costello started to stumble. An album he concedes was one of his worst, it ushered in a period which produced interesting music but lacked the consistent quality of his halcyon days. Interestingly, although he enlisted the other Elvis's band for King of America in 1986, it was a reunion with The Attractions and former producer Nick Lowe that produced his best album of the late 1980s in the form of the scabrous Blood and Chocolate.
The following albums, Spike and Mighty Like a Rose were uncompromising and difficult solo works, as was the string quartet collaboration The Juliet Letters in 1993. It was only reconvening the Attractions for Brutal Youth the following year that gave his fans another glimpse of what first attracted them to him: punchy, angry pop songs, tightly played by an impeccably taut ensemble.
Since then, Costello has become a career dilettante, true to his inner musical quest, but never again returning to heights he scaled in the early 1980s. Maybe the best work of this latter period was 1998's Painted from Memory. This joint effort with Burt Bacharach matched restrained writing from Costello with stately Bacharach arrangements.
Subsequent career nadirs such as the tune-free North (2003), and instrumental orchestral works such as Il Sogno (2004) led many long-term admirers to conclude that Costello had retained his integrity at the expense of his real musical strengths. However, he has given occasional evidence of his former fire. The ballsy bar-room atmosphere of the collaborative The Delivery Man (2004), suggests that he is still capable of giving his fans what they want, in between his more esoteric experiments.
Elvis is married to jazz vocalist Diana Krall and they have twin sons.
*Upon the film's release, it was noted that the name "Napoleon Dynamite" had originally been used by musician Elvis Costello, most visibly on his 1986 album Blood and Chocolate, although he had used the pseudonym on a single B-side as early as 1982. Filmmaker Jared Hess claims that he was not aware of Costello's use of the name until two days before the end of shooting, when he was informed by a teenage extra. He later said, "Had I known that name was used by anybody else prior to shooting the whole film, it definitely would have been changed ... I listen to hip-hop, dude. It's a pretty embarrassing coincidence." Hess claims that "Napoleon Dynamite" was the name of a man he met around the year 2000 on the streets of Cicero, Illinois while doing missionary work for the Mormon Church.
Costello believes that Hess stole the name: "The guy just denies completely that I made the name up... but I invented it. Maybe somebody told him the name and he truly feels that he came about it by chance. But it's two words that you're never going to hear together." To date, Costello has taken no legal action against the film.
Elvis Costello and Elton John to Make a Television 'Spectacle'
Two of the most respected musicians in the world will collaborate on an extraordinary new television series.
"Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..." is hosted by its namesake and produced in conjunction with Sir Elton John's Rocket Pictures. Elton John will be one of the program's Executive Producers.
The series begain airing in 2008 on CTV in Canada, Channel 4 in the UK and Sundance Channel in the US. FremantleMedia Enterprises, will handle sales of the show to the rest of the world.
Conceived to provide a forum for in-depth discussion and performance with the most interesting and influential artists and personalities of our time, the show fuses the best of talk and music television.
"Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..." is an unpredictable and unprecedented television experience. The series of 13 one-hour programs features everything from intimate one-on-ones with legendary performers and notable newcomers to thematic panel discussions, with a variety of performance elements including unique collaborations, acoustic and impromptu "illustrative" demonstrations of the creative process, and some original interpretations of others' songs by Costello.
Pills
Elvis Costello Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
With a microphone in one hand and a chequebook in the other
And the camera noses in to the tears on her face
The tears on her face
The tears on her face
You can put them back together with your paper and paste
But you can't put them back together, you can't put them back together
Children and animals two-by-two
Give me the needle, give me the rope
We're going to melt them down for pills and soap
Four and twenty crowbars, jemmy your desire
Out of the frying pan into the fire
The king is in the counting house, some folk have all the luck
And all we get is pictures of Lord and Lady Muck
They come from lovely people with a hardline in hypocrisy
There are ashtrays of emotion for the fag ends of the aristocracy
What would you say, what would you do?
Children and animals two-by-two
Give me the needle, give me the rope
We're going to melt them down for pills and soap
Give me the needle, give me the rope
The sugar-coated pill is getting bitterer still
You think your country needs you but you know it never will
So pack up your troubles in a stolen handbag
Don't dilly-dally boys, rally round the flag
Give us your daily bread in individual slices
And something in the daily rag to cancel any crisis
What would you say, what would you do?
Children and animals two-by-two
Give me the needle, give me the rope
We're going to melt them down for pills and soap
Give me the needle, give me the rope
We're going to melt them down
For pills and soap
The lyrics to Elvis Costello's song Pills are commentary on the nature of celebrity and media obsession, and how the media feeds upon the lives of the famous while simultaneously destroying them. The first stanza describes the media's vulture-like behavior, pushing microphones and chequebooks into the faces of people who are grieving or going through difficult situations, all in the pursuit of a juicy story. The lines “You can put them back together with your paper and paste / But you can't put them back together / You can't put them back together” highlight the contradictory nature of the media, as they attempt to "fix" the lives of their subjects while simultaneously destroying them by exposing their flaws and vulnerabilities to the world.
As the song progresses, the tone becomes increasingly darker and dystopian. The repeated refrain of "Give me the needle, give me the rope / We're going to melt them down for pills and soap" is a commentary on how society values productivity and efficiency above all else, even if that means destroying things of value (in this case, people and animals) to create products that will make life easier or more comfortable. The final lines “Give us your daily bread in individual slices / And something in the daily rag to cancel any crisis” speak to the idea that society is content to receive small scraps of comfort in exchange for ignoring larger issues and problems on a grander scale.
Overall, the song is a scathing critique of how the media and society as a whole perpetuate a cycle of obsession with appearances, fame, and material comfort, while ignoring the human cost of such a lifestyle.
Line by Line Meaning
They talked to the sister, the father and the mother
They interviewed each member of the family
With a microphone in one hand and a chequebook in the other
The reporters were ready to record their stories and pay them for it
And the camera noses in to the tears on her face
The camera zooms in on her while she cries
The tears on her face
Her way of expressing sadness
The tears on her face
Her emotional pain
You can put them back together with your paper and paste
You can try to fix the situation with money
But you can't put them back together
But the damage is irreversible
What would you say?
What would you do in this scenario?
What would you do?
How would you solve this problem?
Children and animals two by two
An image of life's innocence and purity being matched and destroyed
Give me the needle
Give me the tool to inject
Give me the rope
Give me the tool for hanging
We're going to melt them down for pills and soap
The bodies are going to be destroyed and used in medical supplies
Four and twenty crowbars, jemmy your desire
Use any method necessary to get what you want
Out of the frying pan into the fire
Going from one bad situation to another worse one
The king is in the counting house
The rich keep getting richer
Some folk have all the luck
Some are just born with privilege and opportunity
And all we get are pictures of lord and lady muck
The rest of us only get to see their lavish lifestyles
They come from lovely people with a hard line in hypocrisy
Those in power act like they care, but their actions are inconsistent with their words
There are ashtrays of emotion for the fag ends of the aristocracy
The privileged can use and discard their emotions like cigarette butts
The sugar coated pill is getting bitterer still
Promises and false hope are becoming harder to believe in
You think your country needs you but you know it never will
The government doesn't really care about its people
So pack up your troubles in a stolen handbag
Take your problems and find a way to escape
Don't dilly dally boys rally round the flag
Act quickly and follow the leader
Give us your daily bread in individual slices
Give us the bare minimum to survive
And something in the daily rag to cancel any crisis
The media can help alleviate public panic by providing a distraction
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: ELVIS COSTELLO
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind