FEATURE:
Miracle Man
Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True at Forty-Five
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PERHAPS his best album…
IN THIS PHOTO: Elvis Costello in 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS
Elvis Costello’s debut, My Aim Is True, definitely lived up to its title! A stunning album that was released on 22nd July, 1977, I wanted to look ahead to its forty-fifth anniversary. It is amazing to think that, shortly before he was singed to Stiff through the label's founders Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera, Costello was unsuccessful as a touring artist. His debut album is so complete and accomplished, you wonder what people were hearing and why labels ignored him to that point! With a backing band consisting of members of Clover, a California-based Country Rock act, Costello was working as a data entry clerk when recording – and he still worked at his job throughout recording! It is wonderful to think that Costello was ensuring he had security and balanced a mundane job with recording one of the best albums of the 1970s. There is a romance to this aspiring songwriter working his day job and dreaming up lyrics and melodies. It is hard to think of an artist whose first couple of albums are as impressive as Costello’s. A year after his magnificent debut, he released an album that many consider to be his masterpiece: This Year's Model. Clearly inspired and made for the music industry, My Aim Is True is filled with standout songs; it won enormous critical acclaim from the U.K. and U.S., it reached fourteen on the U.K. album chart. One of the best and most important debut albums in Rock history, the retrospective appraisal and acclaim My Aim Is True has received cements it as a classic. Amazing to hear such confidence and strength from a debut album!
I don’t know if there is a forty-fifth anniversary edition of My Aim Is True planned for next month. It would be nice to think something is happening to mark its birthday. Before getting to a couple of reviews for the immense and staggering My Aim Is True, The Young Folks wrote an article about the album - where they start out by looking at the background to the album being recorded:
“While the punk movement raged in the late ‘70s, one British singer-songwriter was channeling his frustrations into a blend of Buddy Holly-style pop music and punk soul to create what would become one of the best known new wave albums out there. Working as a data entry clerk, Elvis Costello called in sick to his day job in order to rehearse and record his debut album, My Aim is True. The album serves as a collection of life’s most relatable frustrations, marked by pretty melodies and what would become Costello’s signature verbal calisthenics.
For an album that is held up as one of the best debuts out there, My Aim is True certainly had a rough start. Since it was initially only released in the UK and available in the US as an import, American fans were slow to come to the record, while lead singles “Less Than Zero” and “Alison” were both released with very little success in the UK. However, the album eventually gained traction and popularity in England. His American fanbase boomed later that year, after a scandalous decision to play the song “Radio Radio” on Saturday Night Live got him banned from the show for twelve years”.
It is hard to find any reviews anything less than blown away and moved by Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True. Even if you do not know his music, you can pick up My Aim Is True and bond with it. This is what Pitchfork wrote in their review of the album back in 2002:
“Once upon a time, being a bitter, frustrated male musician didn't mean being a jerkass. Perpetually wronged and rarely laid men were capable of being intelligent about their bitterness, focusing their anger not on the whole of womankind, but on particular women (usually flirts and teases) and attacking these women with a potent blend of wit and bile. Rather than self-aggrandizement, self-deprecation reigned supreme. More importantly, subtlety won out over blatant self-pity or obnoxiousness. Yeah, these gentlemen were angry, but they were smart enough to know what they were angry at-- and geeky enough to include themselves in that category.
At the helm of this trend towards new-wave geekdom was Stiff Records, a small label operating out of England with a roster including Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, and the mighty Elvis Costello. With his 1977 debut, My Aim Is True, Costello exploded onto the punk/new-wave scene like a mutant hybrid of Buddy Holly and Johnny Rotten. He had the seething contempt of a punk, but a transparent intelligence, sensitivity, and melodic sense that made him much more interesting than many of his contemporaries. Punks didn't give a fuck; Elvis was sensitive enough to not only give a fuck, but smart enough to be pissed off and disturbed by that fuck.
On My Aim Is True, Elvis' raw energy comes through in a way that's never completely recaptured on later records. While the songs range from mellow country twang to full-on, spitting assault, there's a strange cohesiveness to the album simply by virtue of its rough, rushed feel. Although it's a studio album, there's a latent energy to Nick Lowe's production that grants My Aim Is True all the immediacy of a live show.
While Lowe's blunt production certainly enhances the record, the real star here, naturally, is Elvis himself. My Aim Is True is host to some of the best songs Elvis has ever penned. The brief kick in the balls of the opening track, "Welcome to the Working Week," is perhaps the album's perfect mission statement. With poppy ooh's, a catchy melody, and an undeniably sharp edge, the song excellently captures the cyanide-laced slab of peanut brittle that is Elvis. The lyrics are rife with brilliant, subtle innuendo. From the opening line, "Now that your picture's in the paper/ Being rhythmically admired," it's clear that Costello isn't going to stumble into any cheap lyrical traps. A lesser man would have just used some goofy synonym for masturbation; Elvis went and used the phrase "rhythmically admired." It's more subtle, more original, and infinitely cooler. That's why you love him.
"Miracle Man," "No Dancing," and "Blame It on Cain" bring the album down a notch with an off-kilter punky-tonk feel. "No Dancing," the highlight of the three, introduces a Phil Spector-style effect of massive percussion and multitracked vocals. "Blame It on Cain," a typically Costello-ish tale of dissatisfaction, swaggers with twangy country guitar and pained vocals”.
There are going to be those who are new to My Aim Is True or have not heard it for many years. In the run-up to its forty-fifth anniversary on 22nd July, go and spend time with one of the absolute best debut albums. I am going to wrap up with a review from the AllMusic:
“Elvis Costello was as much a pub rocker as he was a punk rocker and nowhere is that more evident than on his debut, My Aim Is True. It's not just that Clover, a San Franciscan rock outfit led by Huey Lewis (absent here), back him here, not the Attractions; it's that his sensibility is borrowed from the pile-driving rock & roll and folksy introspection of pub rockers like Brinsley Schwarz, adding touches of cult singer/songwriters like Randy Newman and David Ackles. Then, there's the infusion of pure nastiness and cynical humor, which is pure Costello. That blend of classicist sensibilities and cleverness make this collection of shiny roots rock a punk record -- it informs his nervy performances and his prickly songs. Of all classic punk debuts, this remains perhaps the most idiosyncratic because it's not cathartic in sound, only in spirit. Which, of course, meant that it could play to a broader audience, and Linda Ronstadt did indeed cover the standout ballad "Alison." Still, there's no mistaking this for anything other than a punk record, and it's a terrific one at that, since even if he buries his singer/songwriter inclinations, they shine through as brightly as his cheerfully mean humor and immense musical skill; he sounds as comfortable with a '50s knockoff like "No Dancing" as he does on the reggae-inflected "Less Than Zero." Costello went on to more ambitious territory fairly quickly, but My Aim Is True is a phenomenal debut, capturing a songwriter and musician whose words were as rich and clever as his music”.
One of the greatest introductions in music history, I have been listening back to My Aim Is True quite a bit lately. With songs like Miracle Man, Alison (which features the album’s title in its chorus) and Less Than Zero drawing you in, even the songs people don’t hear often are strong and rich enough that they will stick in your head. Sort of resembling Elvis Presley on My Aim Is True’s cover, I am not sure whether that was a sort of joke; people hearing that same first name and thinking they might be similar somehow. Such an exceptional and complete debut, My Aim Is True proves that Elvis Costello is…
A real miracle man.