The Album’s Tale: Elvis Costello & The Attractions 'This Year’s Model'

This Year’s Model moves beyond the prototype, and multilingual too.

Intro

A few days ago, Andres posted my contribution to his Vital Records series. For this, I decided to dig into a genre I have enjoyed deeply over the years, but have never written much about - new wave. I selected three tracks, as the format requires: ‘Cool for Cats’ by Squeeze, ‘What a Waste’ from Ian Dury, and Elvis Costello’s ‘(I Don’t Want To) Go to Chelsea’. These singles, all released in the late 70s, triggered memories and curiosity from a lot of readers, so my plans changed this week to consider the host album for ‘Chelsea’, This Year’s Model. Why that specific track from the three I selected for Vital Records? Read on …

Listen to This Year’s Model by Elvis Costello on your favourite streaming service.

This Year’s Model asks questions of the listener even before we get to the music. We didn’t know it then, but over the years Costello would reveal himself to be one of the most prolific shape-shifters in music. By that, I really do mean music, not just genres such as new wave or even the all-encompassing ‘rock’. He would go on to embrace folk, blues, classical, opera and more besides. He would write songs with Bert Bacharach and Paul McCartney to name but two. He would cover classics. Most of all, he would prove himself over and over again as a master of the art of songwriting.

We didn’t know any of that was to come in 1978 when This Year’s Model was riding on the hurricane of new wave. All we knew was that it was his second album, following the previous year’s My Aim is True. On that first record, he’d been backed by a Canadian band, Clover. It’s a decent album, a very strong debut, but now we can hear it didn’t quite capture the essence of Elvis. Those who read up on this geekly new waver would discover his father was Ross MacManus, professional trumpet player and singer, notably with the Joe Loss Orchestra. They would discover that Declan MacManus was his real name (Costello being a family name and Elvis as a way of getting attention) and that he used to be a computer operator, so the geekiness wasn’t necessarily all image.

Elvis Costello My Aim is True

Costello moved on from Stiff Records for his second album he sought a more zeitgeisty sound. Enter The Attractions: keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas.

Before listening, though, look at that cover. Costello is behind the camera, photographing us (and referencing the film Blow Up). Who are we? We are the models. Look at the line of colours on the right hand edge, looking as if the paper had been incorrectly cut and the printer’s test strip left in place. Because of this ‘error’, the ‘E’ is missing from ‘Elvis’. Or was this to signal Costello as a work in progress, as we all are? And Costello himself, big specs, tight suit and narrow tie, the new wave geek. Great work by Barney Bubbles. Whatever this album we’re about to hear is, it was definitely right for the times.

Here we are, 48 years later, and it still sounds incredible.

We already knew Costello had a gift for songwriting - concise, snappy songs with equally snappy, often caustic, lyrics. My Aim is True showed us that, especially with the classic (The Angels Want To Wear My) Red Shoes: “Oh I used to be disgusted now I try to be amused”. Punk’s morph into new wave, captured in a single line.

The first single from Model, ‘(I Don’t Want To Go) Chelsea’ showed his talent for lyric writing was present and correct, addressing the world of glamour modelling against a tight, lively, percussive background by the Attractions. Well, not really background. This is a tight, professional yet edgy definition of new wave. The themes, both lyrical and musical, continue in ‘This Year’s Girl’:

“A bright spark might corner the market in this year’s girl / You see yourself rolling on the carpet with this year’s girl / Those disco synthesizers, those daily tranquilizers / Those body-building prizes, those bedroom alibis / All this, but no surprises for this year’s girl.”

Somehow this song is sometimes misread as a misogynistic attack on the models themselves, rather than on the nature of the industry they find themselves in. Present tense, because is it really any different now?

And the closing track (of the original album - some reissues have added a single from the time, ‘Radio Radio’) is, depressingly, even more of a warning now than it was then - the sinister in musical tone and even more sinister in lyrical content, ‘Night Rally’:

“You think they’re so dumb, you think they’re so funny / Wait until they’ve got you running to the / Night rally, night rally, night rally”.

I’ll leave it to you to decide who ‘they’ are, which might depend on the side of the pond you’re reading this from.

There are other great tracks because this is an album stuffed full of great tracks, terrifically produced by Nick Lowe. By great tracks, I mean melodies, rhythms, and lyrics recorded by a unit on top form. ‘Little Triggers’ is stately and gorgeous, ‘Lip Service’, ‘Lipstick Vogue’ … Just give the whole album a blast.

If that’s not enough, there’s a completely different take on the album called Spanish Model. Elvis recording in Spanish, in the way Peter Gabriel rerecorded two albums in German? No, much more than that. It’s important because it references Costello’s family musical roots and moves a classic new wave record a long way from new wave. Listen to this too. It’s incredible. For example - leaving aside the vocalists, who are brilliant - the extra drum solo linking ‘No Action’ and ‘Chelsea’. Dynamite.

Costello: “The thing with the translation, and we’ve discovered a lot over the record, [is that] the Spanish adaptation makes the melodies sound a little different, because the sound elements are different. I sing with a lot of, shall we say, attitude, particularly then. With songs like ‘Hand in Hand’ and ‘Living in Paradise’, I didn’t realise these songs had melody - I thought it was just me sneering. I didn’t realise they had tunes until I heard them sung by more melodious singers in another language.”¹

And: “Take my voice out of it and the playing from Pete, Bruce and Steve is sensational.”²

All of which underlines the achievement of the original album. Not too shabby for the early days of a new genre.

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About LP: Inside the Album

Every Tuesday, I post a new piece, now called The Album’s Tale. On the third Thursday of each month, beginning in May, this becomes a long-form piece with an associated exclusive playlist for paid subscribers: The Full Listen.

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1. Lopez, Julyssa (15 July 2021). “Elvis Costello on Why He Remade ‘This Year’s Model’ Entirely in Spanish”. Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 23 January 2022. Retrieved 1 March 2022.

2. Simmons, Sylvie (September 2021). "Elvis Costello reimagines 'This Year's Model' — in Spanish!". Mojo. No. 334. p. 14