Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model in Retrospect
I’ve listened to Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model many more times than the number of years I’ve been alive. For that matter, I’ve listened to it more times than the number of years it’s been out as well, which is to say 35. It was a favorite of my father’s in 1978, who was my age exactly when it first came out, and his affinity for this more bespectacled and angsty of Elvises was passed down to me without the slightest distillation. I’ve listened to the record more times than the number of years my dad’s been alive too, but I think he’d rather leave his age out of this.
It’s nothing short of discombobulating to see This Year’s Model edging in on forty years. It’s the perennial “angry young man” record, and here it is heading into middle age. 1978 saw The Band’s Scorsese-shot and climactic The Last Waltz hit movie theaters and record stores as well as the Stones’ release of their last classic album, Some Girls. Blondie took to the mainstream with Parallel Lines and debuts were delivered from The Police, The Cars and Van Halen. In other words, the pop infrastructure was going through a changing of the guard, and the radio darlings of the ‘80s were already stepping up to bat. Into all of this steps Elvis Costello.
A year before This Year’s Model, he’d already gotten critics and fans on his side with one of the best debut records in history, My Aim is True. It was the kind of album that made all the best production styles and melodies of the ‘50s to ’77 sound like Costello had thought of them first. This was a man equal parts Johnny Rotten and Buddy Holly. A look at the album cover suggests a purer, bygone era, but the lyrics—sexual, caustic and witty—told an entirely different story.
This Year’s Model is where the music caught up to the subversive modernity of the words, and this mostly has to do with the assembling of a pitch-perfect backup group. The Attractions brought in bass lines by Bruce Thomas that could make a valley of dry bones get up and dance, the gentleman-punk drumming of Pete Thomas and the shiny keyboard licks of Steve Nieve. The four recorded a number of great records together, but never did they achieve the kind of musical fusion attained here.