Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello is an actor, born 1954.
The catalogue files Elvis Costello under Acting, which is a fair joke on a man whose screen career consists largely of playing Elvis Costello. He was born Declan Patrick MacManus in London, and the debut album arrived in 1977 on the same wave as punk while sounding almost nothing like it: tight, tuneful, and written by someone who clearly read a great deal.
What he is actually good at is compression. Rolling Stone credited him with reinvigorating the literate, lyrical traditions of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison with the raw energy and sass of punk, which is a polite way of saying he could fit a grudge, a pun and a political argument into the same eight bars. The songs are dense on purpose. They reward a lyric sheet.
The restlessness came next. Rather than repeat the sound that made him, he moved through styles until the discography stopped resembling a rock career at all: a song cycle for voice and string quartet, an album of orchestral heartbreak ballads, a memoir. Two Grammy Awards and two Ivor Novello Awards followed, along with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016.
The film and television credits are a sideline, and a cheerful one. He turns up as himself in comedies, concert films and documentaries, as a version of himself in a New Orleans drama, and once, improbably, as a butler in a low budget western.
Movies (12)
- Spice World (1997)
- Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music (2025)
- Sesame Street's 50th Anniversary Celebration (2019)
- Live Aid (1985)
- De-Lovely (2004)
- 200 Cigarettes (1999)
- The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (2016)
- Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017)
- Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night (1988)
- Prison Song (2001)
- Delirious (2007)
- Straight to Hell (1987)
TV (7)
Books (1)
Music (16)
- My Aim Is True (1977)
- This Year’s Model (1978)
- The Juliet Letters (1993)
- Wise Up Ghost (2013)
- The Sweetest Punch (1999)
- Painted From Memory (1998)
- Brutal Youth (1994)
- Mighty Like a Rose (1991)
- King of America (1986)
- Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (2009)
- North (2003)
- When I Was Cruel (2002)
- Spike (1989)
- The Man: The Best of Elvis Costello (1985)
- The River in Reverse (2006)
- The Very Best of Elvis Costello (1999)
Where to start with Elvis Costello
Eleven short songs, no fat, and the voice already fully formed: My Aim Is True is the right first record. Follow it with This Year’s Model, the same writer with a band that can keep up and a nastier streak.
After that the path forks. The Juliet Letters and Painted From Memory abandon rock instrumentation entirely, and they are the test of whether you like the songwriter or the guitar sound. The memoir, Unfaithful music & disappearing ink, is worth the time if you want his own account of the wordplay.
On screen, Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night shows him as a sideman with real deference, and Treme uses him the way most productions do: as himself, playing well. Leave the cameo in Spice World until you are already committed.
The albums to start with
Four records that cover the range. My Aim Is True is the debut, recorded in twenty-four hours of studio time while he still had a day job. This Year's Model is the tighter, angrier follow-up. Painted From Memory is the Burt Bacharach collaboration, and The Juliet Letters is the string quartet album.
Costello on screen
He acts rarely and usually as some version of himself. Straight to Hell is the Alex Cox oddity with half the British music scene in it, Spice World is exactly what it sounds like, and Treme gives him the most naturalistic screen work he has done.
The documentaries and the memoir
Costello is a good talking head because he actually knows the history. The Beatles documentary and the Roy Orbison concert film both put him in the room. Unfaithful Music is his memoir, long and digressive and much better written than most musician memoirs manage to be.