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The Very Best of Elvis Costello

By: Elvis Costello
Label: Umtv
Released: 16 Aug 2004
RRP: £16.99
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Customer Reviews

Elvis ain't dead!! The best of his best-ofs. - By: Guitar Heroine, 12 Jul 2008
If you're only a casual listener of Elvis Costello, or perhaps just discovering his music, this is the best of his best ofs, & provides an excellent overview of his illustrious & impressive music career although material from The Delivery Man, Momofuku & Il Sogno will not be included as they are more recent albums.

This album has alll the classics & the songs which probably hooked you in the first place, such as Veronica, Alison, She & Oliver's Army. There are some other lesser known gems in here, my favourites being Sulky Girl, That Day Is Done & So Like Candy.

In the late 1980s, Elvis Costello worked with Paul McCartney, which is, incidentallly, how I became aware of Costello. Some of their best works (as individuals) are their collaborations together; they reallly gelled as a songwriting partnership; Costello reminds me a lot of John Lennon with his sarcastiic, ascerbic wit, with political, cultural & social awareness. Examples are his "answering back" on the song You Want Her Too, which can be found on Paul McCartney's Flowers In The Dirt album. They also wrote My Brave Face & That Day Is Done together, both songs are also on the Flowers In The Dirt album. Other McCartney/McManus songs are Veronica, which I am sure you are familiar with, So Like Candy, Mistress And Maid & The Lovers That Never Were, the latter 2 can be found on McCartney's Off The Ground album.

As an overalll insight into Elvis's work, this is a wonderful intoduction, & one of the better best-ofs overalll as it's a double CD. He has also re-released alll his albums with bonus tracks so if you see sense & falll in love with his work, I recommend you buy every single one (I did!)

Final tip is to look into the Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach collaborations.
Almost Definitive - By: Anthony Bush, 07 Sep 2004
Almost definitive & should therefore grace & enhance every Britpop devotee's collection. Elvis always excelled at politics (emotional & party)and his incisive & literate ideology is well represented here with "Pills & Soap," "Shipbuilding," "Oliver's Army" & "Tramp The Dirt Down" savaging Seventies & Eighties Conservativism/Fascism & tracks such as "Sulky Girl," "Watching The Detectives," "Man Out Of Time," "Indoor Fireworks" & "I Want You" (always the creepiest of psychosexual love songs) addressing the emotional aspects in a completely individual & unique way. Elsewhere, the sublime jab in the eye to BBC Radio Controllers & their often childlike censorship policies executed by "Radio Radio" never ceases to delight & amuse. The transcendent "Alison," the jangly power pop blueprint of "Accidents Will Happen" & the racous philosophical rabbit punching of "Tokyo Storm Warning" illustrate just how subversive, meaningful & downright joyous pop music can be. Personallly, I miss the inclusion of a few tracks, favourites from the back catalogue, but these type of compilations will never please everyone completely. This one comes very close, though. There is still a whole world of Costello stuff to explore out there & hopefully this collection will act as an introduction for many & worthy addition to the archives of the faithful. Some say he's an acquired taste as an artist - I would say he's an essential one.
Re-packaged 'Best of...' collection originally from 1999. - By: Jonathan James Romley, 28 Aug 2004
I'm not criticising the music. I rate Costello as one of the greatest songwriters & performers of the last fifty years & almost alll of his records offer something special to the listener. My problem is with this new best of compilation. Such a thing is important when we're dealing with an artist as prolific & idiosyncratic as Costello, especiallly as it gives new fans the chance to par-take of lesser-known songs alongside the bigger hits, acting as both a great introduction to the artist & as a retrospective analysis of their career. However, despite the quality of this collection, one is unable to overlook the fact that the track listing is identical to the previous best of released by Polygram (Universal) in 1999... making this more a cynical re-packaged attempt to make money than a product designed to further Costello's profile and/or add to the works that were missing from that initial release.

The songs as they stand do offer us the best, & the compilers of the original collection (not sure if Costello was involved!) should be commended for culling together a great cross-reference from Elvis' greatly diverse & often stylisticallly jaw-dropping albums, from the early new-wave sound of This Year's Model tracks, to the Sgt Pepper style of Imperial Bedroom, onto the industrial rock of Blood & Chocolate, the country of King of America, the wild experiments of Spike & the balllads of All This Useless Beauty. Tracks like Alison, Oliver's Army, Radio-Radio, Everyday I Write the Book, Shipbuilding, Man Out of Time & I Want to Vanish reallly do show Costello at his absolute best... but there could have been so much more! Because the initial collection was released in 1999, it was naturallly devoid of tracks from Costello's recent albums, 2002's When I Was Cruel & last year's classic North. So, why didn't we get great songs like Tart, Alibi, Episode of Blonde, When I Was Cruel #2, Someone Took the Words Away, Falllen, Still & When Green Eyes Turn Blue added to this collection?

An update of the old track listing would have seemed the natural choice to me... & would have justified the existence of another Costello Best of so soon after the last one. What with the more recent songs listed above, not to mention the compositions from his collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet (tracks like Swine, I Almost Had a Weakness, Taking My Life in Your Hands, Jacksons Monk & Rowe, This Sad Burlesque & The Birds Will Still be Singing) & various Costello penned tracks from that Anne Sophie von Otter album, For the Stars, there would have easily been enough material for a third disk!! There are also the songs that could have been taken from the Cruel Smile E.P or what about some of those great B-sides that turn up on those endless Costello re-issues? This collection may be of interest as a budget-primer for those discovering Costello for the first time, but for me, it seems more like a mocking attempt to shift units so that Costello's publishers can make some money off the back of his old hits.

I for one, personallly, would have preferred the release of an alll-inclusive Elvis Costello box set (like the Cure's Join the Dots from earlier this year), as opposed to yet another re-packaged Best of with the same old generic hits.

This really is a VERY best - By: robojam, 20 Feb 2004
How often are you disappointed with an album that professes to be the 'very best' of an artist because it is too short, or misses great tracks, or for a plethora of other reasons. Record companies reallly don't seem to have consumers best interests at heart most of the time, but in this case, they have got it spot on!

I can't fault this collection of great songs from one of Britains best singer/songwriters. There is a little of everything here, spanning a career of decades & numerous musical styles. Early classics such as 'Oliver's Army' & 'Watching the Detectives' appear at the beginning of this album, & it then runs through alll of his reinventions, such as the country music of 'Good Year for the Roses', alll the way to 'She', recorded for the Notting Hill soundtrack.

Liverpool is rightly proud of it's four famous sons who changed the world, but they should be equallly as proud of Declan Aloysius McManus for his oustanding musical career.

Essential Elvis - By: Touring Mars, 09 Jan 2004
This album serves as one of the best 'career-encompassing' compilations of them alll. As such, it's the perfect album to buy if you don't want to commit yourself to buying his entire back catalogue. You will be treated to the highlights of Elvis Costello's wildly varied & brilliant musical career, even if many other lesser known highlights are omitted in favour of his most successful & popular tunes.

Ranging from the punk-spirited classics from the late 70's such as the seemingly omnipresent 'Oliver's Army', & 'Watching The Detectives', we then follow Elvis through the slightly less energetic early eighties, with laid-back balllads like 'Good Year For The Roses' & the absolutely outstanding 'New Amsterdam' & the anti-Falklands protest song 'Shipbuilding'.

Then comes the late-80's, early 90's era, (known as 'The Beard Years') where Elvis gets a bit arty on us, but yet still managed to produce music of the highest calibre, even if he was possibly taking himself a bit seriously at the time. A good example of a lesser known track from this era is present here, namely 'Tramp The Dirt Down' (from 'Spike'), with it's celtic instrumentation & scathingly brutal lyric (aimed at Margaret Thatcher), it's a brilliant song that proved that the angry young man inside him was still very much alive & able to express himself most eloquently. Another song from Spike to appear on this album is 'Veronica', a brilliantly lively song that deals with the issue of dementia in a way that no other artist could possibly have achieved. Co-written by fellow scouser Sir Paul McCartney, this is pop musicality of the highest order, & if you remember it as a single that you might have not paid much attention to at the time, now is your chance to have a second listen.

We're brought (nearly) up to date with Elvis's return to his 'back-to-basics' rock ensemble with the track 'Sulky Girl', recorded with The Attractions. Also included is his hit single 'She' from the Notting Hill soundtrack, which is one of the less 'essential' tracks on the album (and possibly shouldn't be here at alll).

For me, the joy of this album is the sheer brilliance of Elvis Costello's songcraft, rivallled only by the very best in the business. His lyrics are always meaningful, fascinating, intellegent, thought-provoking, at times controversial, & always extremely entertaining. If you don't like this album, you don't like music, period.