Declan Patrick MacManus (born 25 August 1954), known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer, songwriter, record producer, author and television host. According to Rolling Stone, Costello "reinvigorated the literate, lyrical traditions of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison with the raw energy and sass that were principal ethics of punk", noting the "construction of his songs, which set densely layered wordplay in an ever-expanding repertoire of styles". He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Grammy Awards and two Ivor Novello Awards, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 and into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016.
Born into a musical family, Costello was raised with knowledge and appreciation of a wide range of musical styles and an insider's view of the music business. His professional career as a musician coincided with the rise of punk rock in England. The primitivism brought into fashion by punk led Costello to disguise his musical knowledge at the beginning of his career, but his stylistic range has come to encompass R&B, country, jazz, baroque pop, Tin Pan Alley and classical music. His debut album, My Aim Is True (1977), produced no hit singles but contains some of his best-known songs, including the ballad "Alison". Costello's next two albums, This Year's Model (1978) and Armed Forces (1979), helped define the new wave genre. From late 1977 until early 1980, all of his singles reached the UK Top 30, including his biggest hit "Oliver's Army" (1979). He has had more modest commercial success in the US, but has earned much critical praise. From 1977 until the early 2000s, Costello's albums regularly ranked high on The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll, with This Year's Model and Imperial Bedroom (1982) voted the best album of their respective years. His biggest US hit single, "Veronica" (1989), reached number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100.
For most of his early career, Costello performed with a backing band, the Attractions. He has released album-length collaborations with the classical ensemble the Brodsky Quartet, the songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint and the hip-hop group the Roots. His current backing band are known as the Imposters. Costello has written more than a dozen songs with Paul McCartney and had a long-running songwriting partnership with Burt Bacharach. He has had hits with covers of songs, including Sam & Dave's "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down", Jerry Chesnut's "Good Year for the Roses" and Charles Aznavour's "She". One of his best-known songs, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding", was a cover by Nick Lowe's group Brinsley Schwarz, which remained obscure until Costello's 1979 version. Costello's own songs have been recorded by artists including Linda Ronstadt, George Jones, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Dave Edmunds, Chet Baker and Alison Krauss.
From 2008 to 2010, he hosted a television show, Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., on which he interviewed other musicians. In 2015, he published a well-received memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink. In 2019, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to music.
Early life
Elvis Costello was born Declan Patrick MacManus on 25 August 1954, at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, West London, the only child of a record shop worker and a jazz musician. Both parents were from the Liverpool area and had moved to London together.
Costello's father was of Irish descent and a Roman Catholic, while his mother was English and was raised a Congregationalist.
Family background
Costello's mother, Lillian MacManus (née Ablett, 1927–2021), was born and raised in Toxteth, Liverpool, the daughter of a gas-main layer and a mother who became increasingly disabled by rheumatoid arthritis as Lillian grew up. Responsible for caring for her younger brother and sick mother, Even after she no longer worked selling records, Lillian maintained a keen interest in a wide variety of music, including the popular music of the day.
Costello's father, Ross MacManus, was a professional trumpet player and singer, born and raised in Birkenhead, across the River Mersey from Liverpool. He began his career in music in the late 1940s, playing trumpet in bebop bands in Birkenhead and Liverpool. He segued to playing trumpet and singing in modern jazz bands after moving to London in 1951. By 1954, he was sufficiently well known for his son's birth to be announced in the New Musical Express. From 1955 to 1968, he was a featured singer in the Joe Loss Orchestra, one of Britain's most popular big bands. Ross recorded for small record labels under a variety of aliases, including Day Costello – Costello being Ross's paternal grandmother's maiden name. He also recorded advertising jingles.
Ross's father, Patrick Matthew McManus, known as Pat, was also a professional musician.
Childhood and early musical influences
Costello spent most of his childhood in Twickenham, in western Greater London, before moving to Liverpool with his mother in 1970. Costello was raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy until he was 14.
Costello's parents had separated by the time Costello was ten years old, after which he was raised by his mother.
As a young child, Costello's musical influences came from his parents' record collection, which encompassed a wide range of styles but centred on traditional pop and jazz. Ross's job with the Joe Loss Orchestra required him to sing many of the pop hits of the day for the band's weekly radio show. To learn these songs, Ross received demonstration copies of the original artists' records, which he brought home to rehearse. When Costello grew old enough to have an interest in the current pop hits, Ross began giving him five or six of these demonstration records per week. Costello has said, "That's why I know so many songs".
Costello's early favourites among the hit-makers of the day were the Beatles. He has said that, having turned nine years old in 1963, he was exactly the right age to experience the full force of Beatles fandom as he grew up. He has described the Beatles as his biggest musical influence. Costello was also deeply impressed by the songs of his future collaborator Burt Bacharach, which he knew through the hits British artists Cilla Black and Dusty Springfield had with them.
As Costello grew into his teens, his favourites included British beat groups the Kinks, Small Faces and the Who, Jamaican rocksteady and reggae acts who were popular in Britain, and especially Motown artists, whose work he knew through their British hit singles and through the Motown Chartbusters compilation series. By the time he reached his mid-teens, Joni Mitchell had become an important and enduring influence. When Costello moved to Liverpool, he found he did not enjoy much of the progressive rock that was popular with his peers, and so, casting around for music he might like, he developed an interest in the Grateful Dead and folk rock groups like the Band and the Byrds, whose Sweetheart of the Rodeo introduced him to country music.
Education and decision to pursue a career in music
Costello was a well-behaved if sometimes argumentative student, but not generally an outstanding one. Not having scored well enough on his eleven-plus exams to go on to grammar school, and then a comprehensive school in Everton, Liverpool, for sixth form. Costello showed an early talent for writing. His mother told a journalist that, when Costello was 11 years old, his school entered him into a writing contest held by The Times intended for people aged 16 to 25, for which he won a prize.
Although he never had any alternative career plan, Costello had previously been reluctant to commit to a career in music, partly because his upbringing had made him aware of the potential pitfalls involved. The shock of witnessing a teenage friend's death in a traffic accident changed his mind. He would later write, "Suddenly, everything but music seemed like a waste of precious time".
Costello completed his formal education in 1972 and, still living at home with his mother, set out to find a job that would earn him a steady wage while he pursued a career in music. By 17, he was occasionally being paid a little money. On the eve of the release of his debut album in 1977, Costello told Allan Jones that he had written hundreds of songs.
Rusty
Early in 1972, Allan Mayes invited Costello to join his folk rock band Rusty. As other members left, Rusty soon became a duo, with Mayes and Costello singing and playing acoustic guitars. For a little over a year, Rusty played regularly in small venues like pubs, clubs, schools, and community centres, mostly in and around Liverpool, unpaid or for small amounts of money. In Mayes's estimation, Costello was already a talented songwriter, able to quickly write songs in a variety of styles, and could sing like Neil Young or Robbie Robertson. Mayes has said he introduced Costello to Brinsley Schwarz, a band that would be an important influence. While in Rusty, Costello wrote an early version of a song he would record in 1980 as "Ghost Train", although by then little remained of the Rusty version except the central narrative idea of a married double act making their way through the low end of show business.
Declan Costello
By early 1973, Costello had determined that the music scene in Liverpool was too small to support his ambition to have a career in music, so he arranged to transfer from his job as a computer operator in the Midland Bank data centre in Bootle to a position as a clerk at the bank's Putney branch. The jingle was written by Rod Allen, the jingle-writing member for the advertising agency Allen, Brady, and Marsh. None of this generated anything but rejections until he began creating "show reels" of no more than six of what he believed were his most attention-getting songs, selected to appeal to the recipient of each demo tape. While working as D.P. Costello, he learned to sing and play guitar very loudly and developed a forceful stage presence, although he was still playing to small audiences for very little money. My Aim Is True was recorded and mixed in six four-hour sessions for a total cost of about £1,000. The reference to Elvis Presley, who was still alive at the time, was intended to get attention. The managers also developed Costello's image, particularly the large black glasses. Around this time, Costello recorded "Watching the Detectives" at Pathway with the bassist Andrew Bodnar and the drummer Steve Goulding of the Rumour, with organ and piano overdubs by the keyboardist Steve Nieve. The song was a departure from the sound of My Aim Is True, displaying reggae-style rhythms. It was inspired by the Clash's debut album and by Bernard Herrmann's Hitchcock scores. Costello later called it his "first real record". It was released in mid-October as a non-album single in the UK, reaching number 15, becoming Costello's first single to chart in any country; It charted at number 32 on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and was named among the best albums of the year by US music critics.
1977–1979: Peak pop stardom
In mid-June 1977, Costello held auditions for a bassist and keyboardist for a backing band for a tour to promote My Aim Is True, wanting a sparser sound than on the album.
When Costello began touring the US in mid-November, he received prominent coverage in the US press, even though he played venues holding fewer than a thousand people. By late 1977, Costello had moved from Stiff Records to Radar Records, a new label founded by an associate of Jake Riviera. Riviera had split from Dave Robinson and was now Costello's sole manager. For the next year and a half, Costello's records were released on Radar in Britain.
thumb|left|Costello onstage at [[Massey Hall, Toronto, April 1978]]
Costello recorded his second album and his first with the Attractions, This Year's Model, during short breaks from touring, from November 1977 through January 1978. Produced by Nick Lowe, it was recorded at Eden Studios, in west London, in eleven days. but the biggest influence was the Rolling Stones' album Aftermath (1966).
"(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" was released as the album's first single in early March 1978, reaching number 16 on the UK singles chart. The second single, "Pump It Up", which reached number 24, was written later, while Costello was on tour with other Stiff acts, in reaction to what he later called his "first exposure to idiotic rock and roll decadence". The US version of the album dropped "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" and "Night Rally", a song written in response to the rise of the British National Front, and replaced them with "Radio Radio". This Year's Model placed first in the annual Pazz & Jop poll in the Village Voice.
Costello and the Attractions recorded his third album, Armed Forces, at Eden Studios in six weeks from August and September 1978. Costello said of the album's influences, "If you're sitting in a station wagon driving from Atlanta to Madison, Wisconsin and listening to Bowie's Low and "Heroes" and Iggy Pop's The Idiot and ABBA's Greatest Hits over and over again, that's the kind of record you'll make!" In the US, it spent 25 weeks on the Billboard chart, peaking at number 10 in mid-March. It was also his biggest hit single in Ireland, reaching number four on the Irish singles chart. The second single, "Accidents Will Happen", was released in early May, charting at number 28 in the UK. In the US, it reached number 101, missing the Billboard Hot 100 but charting higher than any previous Costello single.
The concert tour promoting Armed Forces was marked by bad publicity. Costello and the Attractions played some shows that audiences considered too brief and refused to return for encores. Audiences in Sydney, Australia, and Berkeley, California, responded by vandalising the concert venues. After a concert in Columbus, Ohio, on 15 March, Costello got into a drunken argument at a hotel bar with members of the Stephen Stills band and entourage. The argument culminated in Costello disparaging James Brown and Ray Charles with racist insults, in comments he would later call "the exact opposite of my true feelings". When Costello's comments were reported in the press a few weeks later, the bad publicity was sufficiently severe and widespread to be regarded, including by Costello himself, as the reason he never achieved the top-level commercial success in the US that had been predicted for him.
1980–1984: Commercial dwindling
Costello's 1980 Get Happy!! album featured a sound based on vintage American soul music. Some songs marked a distinct change in mood from the angry, frustrated tone of his first three albums to a more upbeat, happy manner. The single, "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down", was a rendition of a Sam and Dave song. Lyrically, the songs are full of Costello's signature wordplay. His only 1980 appearance in North America was at the Heatwave festival in August near Toronto.
In January 1981, Costello released Trust amidst growing tensions within the Attractions. The single "Watch Your Step" was released in the US only and played live on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show, and received airplay on FM rock radio. In the UK, the single "Clubland" scraped the lower reaches of the UK singles chart; follow-up single "From a Whisper to a Scream" (a duet with Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze) became the first Costello single in over four years to completely miss the chart. Costello also co-produced Squeeze's 1981 album East Side Story (with Roger Béchirian) and performed backing vocals on the group's hit "Tempted".
October saw the release of Almost Blue, a cover album of country music including songs written by Hank Williams ("Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do?)"), Merle Haggard ("Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down"), Gram Parsons ("How Much I Lied") and George Jones ("Brown to Blue"). The album received mixed reviews. The first pressings of the record in the UK bore a sticker with the message: "WARNING: This album contains country & western music and may cause a radical reaction in narrow minded listeners". Almost Blue did spawn a surprise UK hit single with a version of Jerry Chesnut's "Good Year for the Roses", which reached number six. Costello had long been an avid country music fan and has cited Jones as his favourite country singer. He had appeared on Jones's duet album My Very Special Guests, contributing "Stranger in the House", which they later performed together on a 1981 HBO special dedicated to Jones.
Imperial Bedroom (1982) featured lavish production by Geoff Emerick, engineer of several Beatles records. Robert Palmer wrote "the music is a sumptuous mélange of pop styles, from Beatles-baroque to Phil Spector Wall-of-Sound to torch-song intimacy." It remains one of his most critically acclaimed records, but again it failed to produce any hit singles—"You Little Fool" and the critically acclaimed "Man Out of Time" both failed to reach the Top 40 in the UK. Costello collaborated with Chris Difford, also of Squeeze, to write the song "Boy With a Problem". Costello has said he disliked the marketing pitch for the album. Imperial Bedroom also featured Costello's song "Almost Blue", inspired by the music of jazz singer and trumpeter Chet Baker. Baker later recorded his own version of the song. Imperial Bedroom was promoted with the tagline "Masterpiece?" It placed first on the Pazz & Jop poll.
In 1983, he released Punch the Clock, featuring female backing vocal duo Afrodiziak and four-piece horn section the TKO Horns, alongside the Attractions. Clive Langer (who co-produced with Alan Winstanley), provided Costello with a melody which eventually became "Shipbuilding", which featured a trumpet solo by Baker and ironic commentary on the Falklands War. Prior to the release of Costello's original, a cover of the song was a minor UK hit for Soft Machine founder Robert Wyatt.
Under the pseudonym The Imposter, Costello released "Pills and Soap", an attack on the changes in British society brought on by Thatcherism, released to coincide with the run-up to the 1983 UK general election. Punch the Clock also generated an international hit in the single "Everyday I Write the Book", aided by a music video featuring lookalikes of Prince Charles and Princess Diana undergoing domestic strife in a suburban home. The song became Costello's first Top 40 hit single in the US. Also in the same year, Costello provided vocals on a version of the Madness song "Tomorrow's Just Another Day" released as a B-side.
Tensions within the band – notably between Costello and bassist Bruce Thomas – were beginning to tell, and Costello announced his retirement and the break-up of the group shortly before they were to record Goodbye Cruel World (1984). Daryl Hall provided backing vocals on the single "The Only Flame in Town", which became Costello's lowest UK chart placement up to that point at number 71. Costello later expressed disappointment with the final album's production, describing it as "probably the worst record that I could have made of a decent bunch of songs". The record was poorly received upon its initial release; the liner notes to the 1995 Rykodisc re-release, penned by Costello, begin with the words "Congratulations! You've just purchased our worst album". Costello's retirement, although short-lived, was accompanied by two compilations, Elvis Costello: The Man in the UK, Europe and Australia, and The Best of Elvis Costello & The Attractions in the US.
1985–1989: Initial collaborations
In 1985, Costello sang the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid. He introduced it as an "old northern English folk song" and invited the audience to sing the chorus. He joined T Bone Burnett for the single "The People's Limousine" under the moniker of the Coward Brothers. He sang with Annie Lennox on "Adrian" from the Eurythmics record Be Yourself Tonight. Costello produced Rum Sodomy & the Lash by Celtic punk band the Pogues. He said his "task was to capture them in their dilapidated glory."
Growing antipathy between Costello and Bruce Thomas contributed to the Attractions' first split in 1986 when Costello was preparing to make a comeback. Working in the US with Burnett, a band containing a number of Elvis Presley's sidemen (including James Burton and Jerry Scheff), and minor input from the Attractions, he produced King of America, an acoustic guitar-driven album with a country sound. It was billed as performed by "The Costello Show featuring the Attractions and Confederates" in the UK and Europe and "The Costello Show featuring Elvis Costello" in North America. Around this time he legally changed his name back to Declan MacManus, adding Aloysius as an extra middle name.
Later that year, Costello returned to the studio with the Attractions and recorded Blood & Chocolate, which was lauded for a post-punk fervour not heard since 1978's This Year's Model. It also marked the return of producer Nick Lowe, who had produced Costello's first five albums. While Blood & Chocolate failed to chart a hit single of any significance, it did produce what has since become one of Costello's signature concert songs, "I Want You". On this album, Costello adopted the alias Napoleon Dynamite, the name he later attributed to the character of the emcee that he played during the vaudeville-style tour to support Blood & Chocolate. (The pseudonym had previously been used in 1982, when the B-side single "Imperial Bedroom" was credited to Napoleon Dynamite & the Royal Guard. Jared Hess, creator of the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite.) After the tour for Blood & Chocolate, Costello split from the Attractions, due mostly to lingering tensions between him and Bruce Thomas. Costello continued to work with another Attraction, Pete Thomas, as a session musician for future releases.
Costello's recording contract with Columbia Records ended after Blood & Chocolate. In 1987, he released a compilation album, Out of Our Idiot, on his UK label, Demon Records consisting of B-sides, side projects, and unreleased songs from recording sessions from 1980 to 1987. He signed a new contract with Warner Bros. and in early 1989 released Spike, which spawned his biggest single in the US, the Top 20 hit "Veronica", one of several songs Costello co-wrote with Paul McCartney. At the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards on 6 September in Los Angeles, "Veronica" won the MTV Award for Best Male Video.
Costello and McCartney wrote several songs together over a short period, which were released over a number of years:
- "Back On My Feet", the B-side of McCartney's 1987 single "Once Upon a Long Ago", later added as a bonus track on the 1993 re-issue of McCartney's Flowers in the Dirt
- Costello's "Veronica" and "Pads, Paws and Claws" from his album Spike (1989)
- McCartney's "My Brave Face", "Don't Be Careless Love", "That Day Is Done" and the McCartney/Costello duet "You Want Her Too", all from McCartney's Flowers in the Dirt (1989)
- "So Like Candy" and "Playboy to a Man" from Costello's Mighty Like a Rose (1991)
- "The Lovers That Never Were" and "Mistress and Maid" from McCartney's Off the Ground (1993).
- "Shallow Grave" from Costello's All This Useless Beauty (1996).
- Costello has also issued solo demo recordings of "Veronica", "Pads, Paws and Claws" and "Mistress and Maid" (a song he did not otherwise record). Two other McCartney/Costello compositions remained officially unissued, while existing as widely bootlegged demos ("Tommy's Coming Home" and "Twenty Fine Fingers"). These two tracks, along with demos of other songs from their collaboration, did eventually see release on the Paul McCartney Archive edition of Flowers in the Dirt.
In 1987, Costello appeared on the HBO special Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night, a tribute to his long-time idol Roy Orbison. Costello co-wrote "The Other End (Of the Telescope)" with Aimee Mann. It appears on the 1988 album Everything's Different Now by Mann's band 'Til Tuesday.
1990s: Collaborations, soundtracks and brief Attractions reunion
In 1991, Costello released Mighty Like a Rose, which featured the single "The Other Side of Summer". With Richard Harvey, he co-composed the score for Alan Bleasdale's mini-series G.B.H.. The score secured them a BAFTA.
In 1993, Costello collaborated with the Brodsky Quartet on The Juliet Letters. It was inspired by a piece in The Guardian about letters to Shakespeare's Juliet Capulet. Cellist Jacqueline Thomas notes "quotes from or references to music we love – and varied musical styles to suit the songs, from Bachian suspensions in 'Deliver Us', to flamenco riffs in 'Romeo’s Seance', a hurdy-gurdy effect built from a Bartók chord in 'Who Do You Think You Are?'"
During this period, he wrote a full album's worth of material for Wendy James, and these songs became the tracks on her 1993 solo album Now Ain't the Time for Your Tears. Costello returned to rock and roll the following year with a project that reunited him with the Attractions, Brutal Youth. In 1995, he released Kojak Variety, an album of cover songs recorded five years earlier, and followed in 1996 with an album of songs originally written for other artists, All This Useless Beauty. This was the final album of original material that he issued under his Warner Bros. contract, and also his final album with the Attractions. He appeared on Desert Island Discs. His choices included Frank Sinatra's "I've Got You Under My Skin", Mozart's aria "Non so più cosa son" and Duke Ellington's cover of Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count". His first choice was Beethoven's "String Quartet No. 16".
In the spring of 1996, Costello played a series of intimate club dates, backed only by Steve Nieve on the piano, in support of All This Useless Beauty. An ensuing mid-year tour with the Attractions proved to be the death knell, with relations between Costello and bassist Bruce Thomas at a breaking point, Costello announced that the current tour would be the Attractions' last. The quartet performed their final US show in Seattle, Washington on 1 September 1996, before wrapping up their tour in Japan. Costello continued to work frequently with Attractions Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas; eventually, both became members of Costello's new back-up band, The Imposters.
Costello had served as artistic chair for the 1995 Meltdown Festival, which gave him the opportunity to explore his increasingly eclectic musical interests. His involvement in the festival yielded Deep Dead Blue, a one-off live EP with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, which featured both cover material and a few of his own songs. To fulfill his contractual obligations to Warner Bros., Costello released the greatest hits album Extreme Honey (1997). It contained an original track titled "The Bridge I Burned", featuring Costello's son, Matt, on bass.
In 1998, Costello signed a multi-label contract with Polygram Records, sold by its parent company the same year to become part of the Universal Music Group. Costello released his new work on what he deemed the suitable imprimatur within the family of labels. His first new release as part of this contract involved a collaboration with Burt Bacharach. Their work had commenced earlier, in 1996, on "God Give Me Strength" for the movie Grace of My Heart. This led the pair to write and record the critically acclaimed album Painted From Memory, released under his new contract in 1998, on the Mercury Records label, featuring songs that were largely inspired by the dissolution of his relationship with Cait O'Riordan. Costello and Bacharach performed several concerts with full orchestral backing, and also recorded an updated version of Bacharach's "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" for the soundtrack to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, with both appearing in the film to perform the song. He also wrote "I Throw My Toys Around" for The Rugrats Movie and performed it with No Doubt. The same year, he collaborated with Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains on "The Long Journey Home" on the soundtrack of the PBS/Disney The Irish in America: Long Journey Home miniseries. The soundtrack won a Grammy Award in 1999.
In 1999, Costello contributed a version of "She", released in 1974 by Charles Aznavour and Herbert Kretzmer, for the soundtrack of the film Notting Hill, with Trevor Jones producing. Costello's version of the song reached number 19 on the UK singles chart. He also co-wrote another song with Aimee Mann, "The Fall of the World's Own Optimist", for her 2000 album Bachelor No. 2.
2000s: Continued collaborations, the Imposters and solo work
thumb|right|Costello performing at Glastonbury, 2005
thumb|Costello performing in 2006
In 2000, Costello produced a list of "500 essential albums for a happy life" for Vanity Fair. From 2001 to 2005, Costello re-issued his back catalogue in the US, from My Aim Is True (1977) to All This Useless Beauty (1996), on double-disc collections on the Rhino Records label. These releases, which each contained second discs of bonus material, ultimately fell out of print by 2007 after Universal Music acquired the rights to Costello's catalogue. Universal subsequently released new deluxe editions of My Aim Is True and This Year's Model with new bonus material of full-length concerts from the time of each album's release. These deluxe editions also fell out of print and Universal has reverted to re-releasing Costello's pre-1987 albums in their original context without bonus material. His accompanying essays were well-received.
In 2000, Costello appeared at the Town Hall, New York, in Steve Nieve's opera Welcome to the Voice, alongside Ron Sexsmith and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. Ann Powers wrote "A new patch on the border between art music and pop is being cultivated, and Elvis Costello is its chief gardener. Even when he was an angry young punk, Mr. Costello wrote unusually intricate melodies and lyrics. Now, at 45, he seeds his compositions with overt jazz and classical influences and uses his popularity to promote the work of equally ambitious hybridizers."
In 2001, Costello was artist-in-residence at UCLA and wrote the music for a new ballet. He produced and appeared on For the Stars, an album of pop songs with the classical singer Anne Sofie von Otter. He released When I Was Cruel in 2002 on Island Records. He toured with a new band, the Imposters (essentially the Attractions but with a different bass player, Davey Faragher, formerly of Cracker).
On 23 February 2003, Costello, along with Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt and Dave Grohl, performed a version of the Clash's "London Calling" at the 45th Grammy Awards ceremony, in honour of Clash frontman Joe Strummer, who had died the previous December. In March, Elvis Costello & the Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"The Scarlet Tide" (co-written by Costello and T Bone Burnett and used in the film Cold Mountain) was nominated for a 2004 Academy Award; he performed it at the awards ceremony with Alison Krauss, who sang the song on the official soundtrack. Costello co-wrote many songs on Krall's 2004 CD, The Girl in the Other Room, the first of hers to feature several original compositions.
In July 2004, Costello's first full-scale orchestral work, Il Sogno, was performed in New York. The work, a ballet based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, was commissioned by Italian dance troupe Aterballeto. It received acclaim from classical music critics. Christina Roden noted "touches of Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, and Igor Stravinsky. Recurring saxophone riffs mirror orchestrations by Serge Prokofiev and Maurice Ravel, while eerie ripples of cimbolom (a folkloric hammered dulcimer) are straight out of Béla Bartok. Costello's use of leitmotif tidily depicts characters and subplots." Performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, the recording was released on CD in September by Deutsche Grammophon. He simultaneously released The Delivery Man, recorded in Oxford, Mississippi, on Lost Highway Records.
thumb|left|Costello's hand prints on the European Walk of Fame, [[Rotterdam]]
A CD recording of a collaboration with Marian McPartland on her show Piano Jazz was released in 2005. It featured Costello singing six jazz standards and two of his own songs, accompanied by McPartland on piano.
A 2005 tour included a gig at Glastonbury that Costello considered so dreadful that he said "I don't care if I ever play England again. That gig made up my mind I wouldn't come back. I don't get along with it. We lost touch. It's 25 years since I lived there. I don't dig it, they don't dig me....British music fans don't have the same attitude to age as they do in America, where young people come to check out, say Willie Nelson. They feel some connection with him and find a role for that music in their lives".
In November, Costello started recording a new album with Allen Toussaint and producer Joe Henry. Costello had a collaborative history with Toussaint, beginning with a couple of scattered album tracks in the 1980s. In September 2006, Costello and Allen Toussaint performed in New York at a series of benefit concerts for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Costello was commissioned to write a chamber opera by the Danish Royal Opera, Copenhagen, on the subject of Hans Christian Andersen's infatuation with Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. Called The Secret Songs, it remained unfinished. In a performance in 2007 directed by Kasper Bech Holten at the Opera's studio theatre (Takelloftet), finished songs were interspersed with pieces from Costello's The Juliet Letters, featuring Danish soprano Sine Bundgaard as Lind.
In 2006, Costello performed with Fiona Apple in the Decades Rock TV special. Apple performed two Costello songs and Costello performed two Apple songs.
In 2007, Costello collaborated with the Argentinean/Uruguayan electro-tango band Bajofondo on the song "Fairly Right" from the album Mar Dulce. In 2008, Costello collaborated with Fall Out Boy on the track "What a Catch, Donnie" from their album Folie a Deux. In Jenny Lewis' 2008 release, Acid Tongue, Costello provided vocals for the song "Carpetbaggers". In November 2009, Costello appeared live with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Madison Square Garden and performed the Jackie Wilson song "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher".
On 22 April 2008, Momofuku was released on Lost Highway Records, the same imprint that released The Delivery Man, his previous studio album. The album was, at least initially, released exclusively on vinyl (with a code to download a digital copy). That summer, in support of the album, Costello toured with the Police on the final leg of their 2007/2008 Reunion Tour. Costello played a homecoming gig at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on 25 June 2006. and, that month, gave his first performance in Poland, appearing with The Imposters for the closing gig of the Malta theatre festival in Poznań.
In July 2008, Costello (as Declan McManus) appeared in his home city Liverpool where he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Liverpool. Costello was featured on Fall Out Boy's 2008 album Folie à Deux, providing vocals on the track "What a Catch, Donnie", along with other artists who are friends with the band.
Costello appeared in Stephen Colbert's television special A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All. In the program, he was eaten by a bear, but later saved by Santa Claus; he also sang a duet with Colbert. The special was first aired on 23 November 2008. It was his first on the Starbucks Hear Music label and a return to country music in the manner of "Good Year for the Roses".
In May 2009, Costello made a surprise cameo appearance on-stage at the Beacon Theatre in New York as part of Spin̈al Tap's Unwigged and Unplugged show, singing their fictional 1965 hit "Gimme Some Money" with the band backing him up.
Costello portrayed The Shape on the record of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a Southern Gothic musical written by T. Bone Burnett, John Mellencamp and Stephen King. In February 2010, Costello appeared in the live cinecast of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, singing some of his own songs, and participating in many of the show's other musical and acting performances. On 30 April 2011, he played "Pump it Up" with the Odds before the start of a Vancouver Canucks playoff game at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia.
2010–present
Costello released the album National Ransom in the autumn of 2010.
thumb|upright=1|Costello performing in tribute to [[Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen, who were the recipients of the first annual PEN Awards for songwriting excellence, at the JFK Presidential Library, in Boston, Massachusetts on 26 February 2012]]
On 26 February 2012, Costello paid tribute to Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen, who were the recipients of the first annual PEN Awards for songwriting excellence, at the JFK Presidential Library, in Boston, Massachusetts. In September 2013 Costello released Wise Up Ghost, a collaboration with the Roots.
On 25 October 2013, Costello was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the New England Conservatory.
In 2012, he played ukulele, mandolin, guitar and added backing vocals on Diana Krall's 11th studio album, Glad Rag Doll (as "Howard Coward"). On 10 September 2013, he played during the Apple September 2013 Event after the introduction of iTunes Radio, iPhone 5C and 5S at Town Hall, at the Apple campus.
He sang on "Funny Little Tragedy" on Gov't Mule's album Shout! (2013). In March 2014, Costello recorded Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes with Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford. During the 2016 Detour, he performed with Larkin Poe.
Costello reunited with the Imposters to record Look Now (2018). The album features three songs co-written with Burt Bacharach, and one song co-written with Carole King. Costello wrote and produced a large majority of the album himself, with help from producer Sebastian Krys. Look Now won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards.
Costello was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to music.
He appeared in Ken Burns's documentary Country Music discussing his love of the genre.
In 2021, Costello appeared at the Royal Variety Performance playing two songs with the Imposters. He was introduced by the MC Alan Carr as a man who has achieved everything except appearing at the Royal Variety Performance. Between songs Costello informed the audience that he was the second McManus to appear. His father Ross appeared in the 1960s singing "If I Had a Hammer".
In January 2022, he performed on The Graham Norton Show. That same month he released the LP The Boy Named If, recorded with the Imposters. The Resurrection of Rust by a reformed Rusty followed later that year.
In April 2023, Costello collaborated with Slovenian band Joker Out on their single, "New Wave". The compilation The Songs of Bacharach & Costello was also released at this time. In August 2023, he made a three-dates mini-tour together with Italian singer-songwriter Carmen Consoli, a project the two had originally planned in 2012 but that at the time had been shelved due to Consoli's pregnancy.
In November 2024, Costello and T Bone Burnett released a scripted comedy audio series on Audible, directed by Christopher Guest, as the Coward Brothers, characters the two created in the 1980s. The series features guest appearances by Harry Shearer as the radio host interviewing the two, along with Rhea Seehorn, Edward Hibbert, Stephen Root and Kathreen Khavari. An accompanying soundtrack album was released via New West Records.
On March 5, 2026, Costello appeared at the 10th annual Love Rocks NYC benefit concert, performing a rendition of the Band's "The Weight" with Hozier, Mavis Staples and Warren Haynes. The performance was acclaimed by American Songwriter.
On May 21, 2026, Costello appeared alongside Stephen Colbert, Louis Cato, and Jon Batiste for the final episode of The Late Show, performing his early demo recording "Jump Up" before they joined Paul McCartney to perform "Hello, Goodbye."
Writing
Since the early 1980s, Costello has written about music for publications including Hot Press, Details, Mojo, Musician, NME, Rolling Stone, Jim Windolf, who worked with Costello, said his "copy was clean, elegant, and ready to run".
Costello has written liner notes for releases by artists including Gram Parsons, the Fairfield Four, Dusty Springfield, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Burt Bacharach, and Bill Frisell. He has written forewords to books by Geoff Emerick, Loretta Lynn, and Wanda Jackson.
In 1993, Costello began reissuing his catalogue of albums from 1977 through 1986, on Rykodisc, and wrote detailed liner notes for each reissued album. Reviewers praised these liner notes as frank and charming. In 2001, he began a second round of reissues, this time of his catalogue from 1977 through 1996, on Rhino Entertainment, and wrote even more detailed liner notes. Goldmine said the Rhino liner notes brought "a wealth of insight into the songs and the creative process itself" and that "liner notes simply don't get any better than this". Pitchfork called them "truly fascinating". Several journalists noted that, at a total of 60,000 words, the Rhino liner notes amounted to a serialised memoir. In 2012, Slate magazine published a book review of the Rhino liner notes in which it called them "one of the best rock-star memoirs of the last decade". In the book, he recounted his life in music and traced parallels between his own experiences and those of his father and grandfather, both of whom were musicians. The book received positive reviews from prominent publications, although some noted that the writing quality was uneven and it might have been improved by being shorter, having a narrower more thematic focus, or both. Billboard criticised its nonlinear structure, its relative lack of emphasis on Costello's pop-star period, and its lack of details about his romantic relationships. The book reached number seven on the New York Times Best Seller list. It was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize, a British award for excellence in writing about music. The audiobook, narrated by Costello, was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Acting and television presenting
Costello has played himself or semi-fictionalised versions of himself in movies and television shows, including Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), The Simpsons (2002), Frasier (2003), Two and a Half Men (2004), 30 Rock (2009), Treme (2010), and Sesame Street (2011). He has also played more character-based roles, such as the title character's eccentric brother in screenwriter Alan Bleasdale's television series Scully (1984), an inept magician in Bleasdale's movie No Surrender (1985), a teacher at an impoverished school in the movie Prison Song (2001), and the title character's father in the children's animated series The Adventures of Pete the Cat (2017). In 1995, he appeared as a guest pundit on the British football commentary television show Football Italia.
In 2003, Costello substituted for an ailing David Letterman as the host of Late Show with David Letterman, making him the only musical guest of the show to have served as guest host. Costello's performance on that show led to interest in developing a music-orientated talk show with him as the host, which came to fruition a few years later.
In 2008, Costello began production on Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., a show on which he interviewed and performed songs with other musicians. The series was executive-produced by Elton John, who also appeared as a guest, and other guests included Tony Bennett, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Bono and the Edge of U2, opera singer Renée Fleming, and former president (and accomplished saxophonist) Bill Clinton. It ran for 20 episodes over two seasons from 2008 through 2010, and aired on Sundance Channel in the US, CTV in Canada, and Channel 4 in the UK. The show was received favourably in the US, with reviewers praising Costello's ability to get his guests to reveal insights into their creative processes and calling him a "deeply knowledgeable, erudite and witty host".
Public image and controversies
Costello revealed little about his background and gave few interviews in the first five years of his career, so the few widely published interviews he gave played a large role in forming his early public image. This phrase would be associated with him throughout his career. Costello did not want to play the song because he thought the subject was too obscure for American audiences and the song was too low-key to make a strong impression.