Top 40 Elvis Costello Quotes

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.

I’ve been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.

It’s a petty thing, but I wouldn’t join the Scouts when I was a kid, ’cause you had to swear allegiance to the queen. I’m just not a royalist. I think it’s idiotic, a hereditary principle.

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie.

We’re all just animals. That’s all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That’s where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert’s a great man, and again, you know, I don’t play the guitar very good, but when I’m playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert.

I find humming is very useful.

And I don’t feel any form of music is beyond me in the sense of that I don’t understand it or I don’t have some love for some part of it.

I think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn’t have a twist.

Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love.

You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it’s just going to be an obscurity.

I’d been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.

I’m a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale.

But there are things in Il Sogno that the methods of The Delivery Man could never achieve.

Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock‘n’roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I’ve done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back.

‘Content‘ is a word that has never sat well with me. Like ‘maturity‘. They are two words I’ve never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling.

And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music – the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.

Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.

I find it to be the ultimate backhanded compliment when you are compared against yourself.

Well, I’ve had a lot of different experiences in music over the years. And not everything you do can satisfy everybody’s idealised version of you.

I get very frustrated by this term ‘genre exercise.’ I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don’t agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.

I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.

I’ve never felt British. I’m just not interested in national identity. I don’t know why.

Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock’n’roll, but it was already a little past rock’n’roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.

I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.

It’s what I do. I don’t deserve any awards for this, it’s just music. It’s just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.

You have to face the fact that I have no reputation as a composer; I have my reputation as a songwriter and a performer-and that opportunity came this summer, when I was invited to perform at the Lincoln Centre festival in New York… three nights.

You do have to be a bit careful with your voice. It is an instrument.

There was not a lot of rock n’ roll in the house. Our parents didn’t think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn’t very hip.

People tend to repeat the same quotes at me that I said when I was 23. And of course, you say things then, and sometimes they’re ill-advised.

I’ve worked hard, every single day since I left school. I think I have a Protestant work ethic.

People become so deeply attached to the sound of one period that they blow a fuse when you move on. I’ve heard people complain bitterly about recordings they haven‘t even heard.

Very similar experience happened last year when we released this album, North. It was on Deutsche Grammophon, it was very, very honest. It was the most honest record I’ve ever written.

I don’t think I was ever particularly mean. I can certainly think of some idiotic exchanges I’ve had. I was accused of destroying pop music, like Wagner destroyed opera – a guy in Germany started ranting that at me.

And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.

My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It’s an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials.

Life for me is about movement.