Word: costello
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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SINCE HIS ARRIVAL ON THE POST-punk scene 17 years ago, Elvis Costello has shown himself to be one of the most prolific and protean songwriters of his generation. Known for lean, melodious three-minute songs with scathing lyrics about sexual guilt and revenge, he reigned for more than a decade as the acerbic headliner of progressive pop. Then came the '90s. Once a skinny faux nerd, Costello put on weight and grew a beard. His last pop album, 1991's sentimental Mighty like a Rose, was a disappointment. After last year's The Juliet Letters, a sedate song cycle...
...sliding family-sitcom scale; this week, every album reviewed scored a "Brady" or above (the highest rating is "Simpson," the lowest rating is "Cleaver"). FM guessed that the albums were judged according to what sort of families would listen to them, with the Simpsons tuning in to Elvis Costello and the Partridges preferring the intense emotion of Tori Amos...
...very best Sugargliders songs, the Meadows' vocal timbres aren't what holds your attention: the lyrics do. The last person to comment so incisively, and with such a sense of having been hurt, on boy-girl stuff may have been the early Elvis Costello; but where he always blamed his ex-girlfriends, the Sugargliders always blame themselves, which I find much more attractive. In "Will We Ever Learn" for example: "Do you think it's human/To except to be loved from foot to head?/Well my head's been on holiday/Since the day we met..." Or in "Ahprahran," for example...
...self-proclaimed experts, it is amazing how poorly the anti-violence crusaders understand television. Beavis and Butt-head is not the harbinger of some sociological sea-change. The antics of a pair of dolts is a popular American genre as old as Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and these vaudevillians hardly brought down the Union...
Miller was, and is, equally capable of astonished joy ("Sleeping through Heaven"), comic enthusiasm ("The Girls Are Ready to Go," unaccountably abbreviated on the new CD's label as "TGARTG"), Elvis Costello-ish self-mockery ("Bad Year at UCLA"), and honestly painful self-reproach ("The Red Baron"). Once you stop noticing how high his voice is, you'll probably start noticing its agility: "I want to go bang on every door/And say 'Wake up, you're sleeping through heaven'" has three contrasting riffs buried in it. Your average power-pop singer would give it one at most. Far from being...