My friend Sean posted some Elvis Costello YouTube links earlier today, and we had a quick chat about the radness that is Elvis Costello. I had already ripped four early career Rhino re-issues so I went ahead and grabbed the rest of what I have on disc for tonight. Though the early stuff is still, I think, his best work, I really appreciate pretty much everything he’s done. ‘The Juliet Letters’ has some really beautiful moments in it, the Burt Bacharch disc is fun and I think ‘When I Was Cruel’ has a great feel to it. And while it is pretty much all written well and performed well, sometimes the production seems to get in the way… it’s just too clean.

But his singing has improved greatly. While there are moments in ‘My Aim Is True’ and ‘This Year’s Model’ that have a young punky feel, by the mid-90s Elvis’s voice really matured. As he started to sing with string quartets, Tony Bennet, and started to date then marry Diana Krall, he has been around more and more musicians with broader influences and training. In many of my music theory classes, I have told my students that one of the best things they can do for their musicianship is play in a garage band. Then play in a dance band, a jazz band, as many styles as they can with as many different ways of learning music as possible. In some ways, I think this is what Elvis Costello has done. His career has spanned over thirty years (and you should ask yourself, how many late 70s punks are still doing great creative work). While I don’t listen to everything he does with the frequency that I do those first four albums, there is little that he has done that I think is done poorly. In fact, there is little that he has done that I think is just good. I’d take thirty years of his good any day.