For Elvis Costello’s 70th Birthday, HIs 70 Greatest Songs, Ranked

In his autobiography, Elvis Costello wrote that the popular idea of him early on as an angry man was just a trick of physiology. He wrote: “It seems that the space between my two front teeth, which made Jane Birkin, Ray Davies, and Jerry Lewis so appealing, has had the effect of making half of what I say sound like a provocation or an insult.”

It’s a funny self-observation, but let’s be real — as a writer as well as a singer, Costello gave the world a little help with that perception. He has been a provocateur, in all the best senses, and when he doled out insults, as he did in a significant part of his early catalog, especially, he had the thoughtfulness behind it to make it feel like the young man or woman (or world) that was on the receiving end seem like they deserved it. There was a sense of anger in his songs that felt gratifying, because he had serious observations about how society and relationships went wrong, and a playful wit to go with the wrath. Even in singing mostly relationship songs, he felt like a kind of protest singer. What we hear now about the “culture of grievance” feels wrong in politics, but it was great for rock ‘n’ roll at the time.

Eventually, of course, Costello revealed multi-faceted personas that included such once-unthinkable exercises as actual requited-love songs — and a greater ability to span and traverse genres than anyone else in known music history, including partial or whole albums dipping into country, jazz, neo-classical, soul and Tin Pan Alley-type settings. There has been no one more innately talented as a songwriter, with his reach never exceeding his grasp when it comes to making all these forms fit his sensibilities.

Costello turns 70 on Aug. 25, and for the occasion, we’ve come up with a ranking of his 70 best songs. If you find your favorites missing, I can only tell you that I seriously considered at least 50 more. (He does have 33 albums out, give or take a collaborative effort or side project or two.) We’ve also included videos for each track, sometimes going with a live performance instead of the studio original just for fun. Read along and consider a man who’s been this year’s model of breadth and brilliance for close to 50 of those years now.

70. Waiting for the End of the World

On his debut album, 1977’s “My Aim Is True,” Costello summoned the apocalypse — “Dear lord, I sincerely hope you’re coming, ’cause you really started something” — yet the lyrics make it clear this imagining is happening while the author takes a commuter train ride. In his world, even mundanity leads to Revelations. That first album was recorded just before he enlisted the Attractions as his backing band, but it became a fiery highlight of their set after he did (as seen in the video above), and it continues to show up occasionally in his 21st-century shows with the Imposters.

69. Next Time Round

Costello has never been more melodramatic than when he predicts here that the end of a relationship will actually kill him: “You used to take the breath out of me / Now I think you’ll be the death of me… / You’ll be someone else’s baby / But I’ll be underground.” The song isn’t really cause to call the National Suicide Hotline, though. As a lively finale to the emotionally intense yet sometimes mirth-riddled “Blood and Chocolate” album, this closer is good, cathartic fun more than it is a true “goodbye, cruel world” note.

68. Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)

Marc Ribot’s clangy guitar sound was never put to better use — not even on the Tom Waits records he played on — than here on Costello’s mid-period ode to, once again, waiting for the end of the world. The singer’s complaints include a presumed broadside against recently sacked Attractions bass player Bruce Thomas, who’d recently published a roman à clef novel about his experiences in the band (“Wake up, zombie, write yourself another book,” Costello taunts). There’s also what seems to be a random swipe at Sting (“Better make like a fly if you don’t want to die / Look out, there goes Gordon!”). Of course, Costello would later become pals with Sting, as he turned into one of rock’s great statesmen instead of one of its angry boys. But we do love him when he’s aggravated.

67. Night Rally

Fascism is one of Costello’s pet subjects, and it was a subject he addressed at greater length, as a metaphor or the real thing, in songs like “Goon Squad” and “Green Shirt” just a bit later on the album “Armed Forces.” But in this closer to the European edition of “This Year’s Model,” he first laid down a nightmare vision of a populist far right gone sinister, leading up to an abrupt cold finish that was meant to leave listeners a little thrown off. It’s arguably more relevant now than it was then, on both sides of the Atlantic.

66. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror

This is one of those very occasional Costello songs that goes from a clearly emotional and relatable start into something more impressionistic, even psychedelic. (To the extent that a song that includes the Bible’s shortest verse, “Jesus wept,” can read as psychedelia.) But with a fantastic horn chart, it remains one of Costello’s most soulful songs throughout, even when he’s tripping out. Think of it as: Van Morrison meets Dr. John, and they take acid together while staging an earnest intervention with a beloved narcissist friend.

65. The Other End of the Telescope