Elvis Costello was “on the verge” of releasing what he calls his “ragtime songs” 35 years ago, but stopped in his tracks because they were too “revealing”.
The 72-year-old singer has just dropped the 49th anniversary edition of his debut album My Aim is True – which includes previously unreleased tracks – and opened up to Rolling Stone about why he cut some songs from the record before it was initially released.
He mused: “I felt [at the time that] they revealed too much, which is why they were never released until now. I was on the verge of releasing them like 35 years ago, and then I thought, ‘No, they just— everybody will see.’”
He added: “You know, it was like showing your pictures, in clothes that you now know don’t suit you.”
However, when it comes to listening to the “vaudeville-sounding songs” now, Elvis said they’re “nothing to be embarrassed about” and “sound like somebody learning”.
He continued: “Everybody has to start somewhere. And again, I would be delighted if some younger writers listened to those songs and it gave them any confidence in what they were doing, because you can hear the ambition to do something, and it isn’t quite formed.”
Elvis also opened up about writing one of his most famous songs – Alison – and how a woman in the supermarket inspired the classic track.
He said: “I never wanted to tell people, have this mental image of somebody. You know, I slightly romanticised this encounter with this supermarket checkout girl that just was somebody I thought, like sometimes like when you do a drawing, there’s sometimes a model.
“There was something disappointed in her eyes that stuck with me, and maybe it was just the boredom of the job. I don’t know.
“That’s what I was speaking of. The story describes a love affair retrospectively. Whatever has happened, it’s happened before the song began.”
He also said the perception of the song was never meant to be a “murder ballad”, as he sighed: “I cannot understand why anybody took that out of it.”