Elvis Costello’s four favorite Rolling Stones albums

Every artist seems to go through a phase when they regard The Rolling Stones as one of the greatest bands in history. While The Beatles may have arrived earlier and covered more artistic ground, the music of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards stands alone as one of the best songbooks in rock and roll. The Stones have a definite sweet spot, and Elvis Costello observed that some of their greatest moments span different periods of their catalogue.

Then again, Costello was never one to follow artists who stuck to just one sound. While it’s fine for someone to capture the right feeling for a single song, it’s far more compelling to view a career as a marathon rather than a sprint. This often means switching things up with each visit to the studio, embracing evolution and experimentation along the way. Just look at what Costello did throughout his career with and without The Attractions. The core basis of his sound is still intact from the beginning, but the punk ethos of My Aim is True is much different from the artiness of Imperial Bedroom or even the later highlights like Blood and Chocolate.

The Stones were no different once they started hitting the ground running. While their core identity today is that of a bluesy rock and roll band, their finest moments in the 1960s involved them going out of their comfort zone, including immersing themselves in psychedelic rock and chamber pop, depending on what the moment called for.

When talking to Vanity Fair, Costello thought that some of the best moments The Stones ever had came from this period, listing as his favorite albums and songs, “Aftermath (1966), ‘Stupid Girl’, ‘Take It or Leave It’ Between the Buttons (1967), ‘My Obsession’ Let It Bleed (1969), ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ Some Girls (1978), ‘Shattered’”.

Although Aftermath is a good starting point for anyone getting acquainted with The Stones’ original material, Between the Buttons is a much softer touch, usually focusing on the Beatles-adjacent side of their sound in their early days. While most non-rock fans would still be familiar with a song or two off Sticky Fingers like ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ or even ‘Bitch’, he probably may have seen a bit of himself on Some Girls.

Ignoring the group’s attempts at making a rock and roll disco song on ‘Miss You’, ‘Shattered’ and ‘Respectable’ were the kind of rough and ragged songs that weren’t all that different from what The Clash had been doing around the same time, which played a huge part in Costello breaking out of his bubble to work on tunes like ‘Watching the Detectives’ and ‘Allison’.

While The Stones have seeped their way into the DNA of most rock bands, the way Costello has absorbed their music is a lot more subtle. Compared to people who just want to kick back with a bluesy riff just like Richards could, Costello’s best ballads carry on the tradition of tracks like ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘Dead Flowers’, being sarcastic, witty, and absolutely devastating depending on what the tune calls for. The Stones are still an inherent part of rock and roll culture, but their influence is baked into Costello’s bones at this point.