Rest assured that this is not the last appearance Elvis Costello will make here.
In fact I think it's fair to say that good old Elvis is one of the patron saints of my particular style of pop music admiration, given his simultaneous tendencies to make really good pop songs and also to hate so much of what goes along with making really good pop songs (RADIO IS A SOUND SALVATION! RADIO IS CLEANING UP THE NATION!). On a personal level, he was the first artist I really heard who used the language of 50s pop--greatly beloved to me as a child--to write songs with a modern and cynical edge. (I am thankful it was Elvis Costello who got to me first and not Billy Joel's Glass Houses,
but I think I was the right age when I discovered Glass Houses,
which was 20.
More on that soon.)
This song, off his debut album My Aim Is True, is typical of what one might call Costello's unique romantic style (which I can only describe as "sexually passive-aggressive")--making it a wonderfully absurd bonus that the only video I could find of it on YouTube is this jumble of cute-cat footage.
(Sexually passive-aggressive? How's this: "I get you in my dreams/You should do the things you see".
I see what you did there, DECLAN.)
But in any case, if the theme of this week is "spring fever" (and it IS!) this homage to the sneaky feeling fits right in.
*
The song: Elvis Costello, "Sneaky Feelings"; 1977
"The magic of the moment might become too much for you"? CHEERS, Elvis.
Yrs,
AW
