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Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello (born Declan Patrick MacManus, 25 August 1954) is an English singer-songwriter. He began his career as part of London's pub rock scene in the early 1970s and later became associated with the first wave of the British punk/New Wave movement of the mid-to-late 1970s. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader than that of most popular songs. His music has drawn on many diverse genres; one critic described him as a "pop encyclopaedia", able to "reinvent the past in his own image". more »

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She looked at the pictures on a newspaper pane
That was taped to the window
To keep out the wind
To keep out the rain

To keep out the nonsense
And block out the needing
To keep up her spirits
With improving reading
But the ink from the columns
Dissolved down into the stain
On the bare wood floor
That extended to the door

Pictures of bright futures somehow ignored
How they offered her finery she could never afford
Tempting out savings that she didn't have or could never risk
Not a fashionable kindness, it was grotesque

The beaus with their fiddles played "The Rascal's Release"
We toasted to valor
And wished there were peace
Six months later in a newspaper margin

They were all cut down in a cavalry charge
Weeping, Miss Imogen said to her priest
"I gave him my virtue
It was the least I could leave him
On the eve of departure
Though I will long for him now and hereafter

And the child I'll be raising may have his blue eyes
What if he grows up and dies
On some distant unnamable hillside or field
Because a king and a concubine put a mark on his shield"

Thomas tomorrow, Thomas no more
Father and sunshine, beyond and before
William who brought his drum home from the war
To beat it for young lads whose days
Didn't even add up to a score

I don't spend my time perfecting the past
I live for the future
Because I know it won't last

A bent note on a horn I can't play
The ghosts in the window
That I can't wish away
Freedom to be reckless
Freedom to plunder
Freedom to dream
Freedom to wonder

When you get where I am now
You may feel differently
The cliff drops away sharply
Falls into the sea

No work today
No hope tomorrow
No bread for breaking
No wine for sorrow

Nobody is selling
No truth for telling
No work tomorrow
No work today
Look at that child bride and her ideal bouquet
Boys, pick up a rifle
That's too much to pay
Count out her teardrops
Wipe them away

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