“It’s a complicated story.” Elvis Costello on why he no longer plays one of his best-known and most-loved songs, Oliver’s Army

Elvis Costello’s 1979 single Oliver’s Army, a UK number two single for the singer-songwriter, is, by some distance, his second-most streamed song on Spotify, bettered only by Pump It Up, from 1978’s This Year Model. It is also arguably his best-known and most-loved song worldwide. But in 2022, Costello announced that he would no longer be playing the song at his gigs, a decision he talks about in a new [paywalled] interview with The Times.

Costello’s most successful UK single, Oliver’s Army was written as a commentary on ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, following the musician’s first trip to Belfast in 1978. In sleevenotes written for a 2002 reissue of Armed Forces, its parent album, Costello recalled being taken aback by the sight of “mere boys walking around in battle dress with automatic weapons”, adding “They were no longer just on the evening news.”

Titled in reference to English politician and statesman Oliiver Cromwell, despised throughout Ireland for the brutality inflicted by his soldiers during military campaigns in the country, the song also touches upon Britain’s colonial wars in other overseas territory, and alludes to the idea that the British ruling class always relies on young working class men and women – “boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne” – to fight its battles and safeguard its elite status.

The song’s most contentious lyric is “Only takes one itchy trigger, One more widow one less white n****r”, is a reference to the racist attitudes which underpinned British military campaigns across the world in centuries past, and which permeates sections of the British Army to this day. Costello’s Irish grandfather, Pat McManus, had served in the British Army during World War 1.

In 2013, BBC radio station 6Music took the decision to censor the aforementioned lyric, a spokesman for the station later explaining, “We take into consideration a number of factors including the nature of the language, the station and its audience, the time of day, editorial justification and the wider context of the program.”

In 2022, aware of the controversy around the song, Costello announced that he would no longer be playing it live.

Asked about this during his interview with The Times, the 70-year-old singer/songwriter replied, “It’s a complicated story. So you don’t need it [during his gigs] because people half-hear it, they don’t know the history. And I will say that you have had more than 40 years to hear the original.”

Costello’s first musical, A Face in the Crowd, will open in London at the Young Vic theatre next week.