Elvis on Politics

Lest anyone think I'm only interested in politics, let's turn the topic to music. Here are my five favorite political songs by Elvis Costello. Some are overtly political, particularly British politics, while others have gained political resonance with the passage of time. Some are among his best known, while others are a bit more obscure. Some are fantastic while others are just as good.

Pills and Soap: This standout from the somewhat lackluster album Punch the Clock is Costello at his most menacing. With a sparse, yet driving arrangement and lyrics that veer from the impressionistic ("ashtrays of emotion") to the starkly concrete ("give me the needle, give me the rope"), the song paints a bleak picture of a world where waking up is only the beginning of the nightmare.

Radio Radio: Three decades and numerous corporate mergers, culminating in more media outlets under the control of fewer and fewer people, have given this song even more dimension than when it was just the catchy song that got Costello banned from Saturday Night Live.

Less Than Zero: Oddly enough, the producers of SNL apparently had no problems with Costello playing this song. In fairness, most US listeners, they probably based their judgment on the so-called "Dallas version", where the Oswald in the lyrics was Lee Harvey Oswald rather than former British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley. Either way, the lyrics are among Costello's most pointed, even in comparison to other songs from his early albums.

Let Him Dangle: Inspired by the same true story as the film Let Him Have It, this song from 1989's Spike uses a gross miscarriage of justice as the springboard for Costello's musings about the political under-pinning of public outcries to revive the death penalty in England. Though the word-play is characteristically rich, the heart of the song is found in a fittingly blunt question. "If killing anybody is a terrible crime, why does this blood-thirsty chorus come 'round from time to time? Let him dangle?"

Tramp the Dirt Down: "When England was the whore of the world, Margaret was her madam." Suffice it to say, he wasn't talking about writer Margaret Atwood on this poison-pen letter, also from Spike.

Honorable mention would have to go to Costello's rendition of (What's So Funny `Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding? from his 1979 album Armed Forces. Though he didn't compose the song, it's become so much associated with it that it belongs to him as much, if not more, than its writer Nick Lowe.

If you don't own these songs already, you owe it to yourself to (legally) download at least two of them.