Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello is an English singer-songwriter who came to prominence in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre and, eventually, his music would consist of many diverse genres.

Costello has won multiple awards in his career, including a Grammy Award, and has twice been nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male. In 2003, Elvis Costello & the Attractions was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Costello number 80 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Costello's first single was "Less Than Zero" which was released in March 1977. Two months later, his debut album, My Aim Is True, was released.

In December 1977, Costello and The Attractions would appear as the musical guest act on the episode of Saturday Night Live as a last minute fill-in for the Sex Pistols. In 1978, the band recorded This Year's Model which included the British hit "(I Don't Want to Go To) Chelsea" and "Pump It Up".

In 1979, Costello released his third LP Armed Forces. Both the album and the single "Oliver's Army" went to #2 in the UK, and the opening track "Accidents Will Happen" gained wide television exposure thanks to its innovative animated music video.

In 1980, Get Happy!! would be released and would be the first of Costello's many experiments with genres that he is not normally associated with. In 1981, the band released Trust and the single "Watch Your Step" was released.

Following Trust, Costello released Almost Blue, an album of country music cover songs written by the likes of Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons. Almost Blue did spawn a surprise UK hit single in a version of George Jones' "Good Year for the Roses" which reached #6.

Imperial Bedroom was releasd in 1982 which featured much darker sound and featured Costello's song "Almost Blue". In 1983, he released Punch the Clock, featuring female backing vocal duo and a four-piece horn section, alongside The Attractions. The album generated an international hit in the single "Everyday I Write the Book", aided by a music video featuring lookalikes of the Prince and Princess of Wales undergoing domestic strife in a suburban home. The song became Costello's first Top 40 hit single in the U.S. In 1985, he appeared in the Live Aid benefit concert in England, singing the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" as a solo artist.

In 1986, Costello releasedd King of America, an acoustic guitar-driven album with a country sound. Later that year, Costello returned to the studio with the Attractions and recorded Blood and Chocolate. The album produced one of Costello's signature concert songs, "I Want You". In 1989, he released Spike, which spawned his biggest single in America, the Top 20 hit "Veronica".

In 1991, Costello released Mighty Like a Rose, which featured the single "The Other Side of Summer". In 1993, Costello experimented with classical music with a critically acclaimed collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet on The Juliet Letters. He reunited with The Attractions to released Brutal Youth in 1994.

In 1995, Costello 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. A greatest hits album, Extreme Honey, was released in 1997. It contained an original track titled "The Bridge I Burned", featuring Costello's son, Matt, on bass.

Costello would work with Burt Bacharach in 1996, on a song called "God Give Me Strength" for the movie Grace of My Heart. They would record the critically acclaimed album Painted From Memory in 1998. They 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 mini-series of the same name. The soundtrack won a Grammy that year.

In 1999, Costello contributed a version of "She" for the soundtrack of the film Notting Hill. For the 25th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Costello was invited to the program, where he re-enacted his abrupt song-switch.

Costello released the album When I Was Cruel in 2002 and toured with a new band, the Imposters. He appeared as himself in the "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation" episode of The Simpsons and, along with Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, and Dave Grohl, they performed a version of The Clash's "London Calling" at the 45th Grammy Awards ceremony, in honour of Clash frontman Joe Strummer. In March, Elvis Costello & The Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That September, he released North, an album of piano-based ballads.

The song "Scarlet Tide" was used in the film Cold Mountain and 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. Costello released the album The Delivery Man, in September of the same year, and it was hailed as one of his best albums.

A CD recording of a collaboration with Marian McPartland was released in 2005. It featured Costello singing six jazz standards and two of his own songs, accompanied by McPartland on piano. The River in Reverse was released in the UK the following year in May.

In 2006, Costello would do a studio recording of Nieve's opera Welcome to the Voice with Barbara Bonney, Robert Wyatt, Sting and Amanda Roocroft. The album reached #2 in the Billboard classical charts.

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. In a performance in 2007 at the Opera's studio theatre, the finished songs were interspersed with pieces from Costello's 1993 collaborative classical album The Juliet Letters. The 2009 album Secret, Profane & Sugarcane includes material from Secret Songs.

Costello released Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, a collaboration with T-Bone Burnett, in June 2009. He released the album National Ransom in autumn of 2010. In February 2012, Costello paid tribute to music legends Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen who were the recipients of the first annual PEN Awards for songwriting excellence.