"That's how rock 'n' roll works."
Last Sunday evening I went out for work drinks. Before long the inevitable had happened. The twilight hours of Monday were wasted trying to rest, and after an exasperatingly-short few hours of sleep I went to Leigh to root around for CDs and vinyl. One of my finds was Elvis Costello and the Attractions' Armed Forces, both unusual and a coincidence, as he concerned a tweet I had made a few hours previously. At 6pm, untagged and therefore totally umprompted, the man who I was sure couldn't have been Elvis Costello, before it became evident it was, sent a kind, generous reply from his iPhone.
This is fine by me, Billy.
— Elvis Costello (@ElvisCostello) June 28, 2021
It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That’s what I did. #subterreaneanhomesickblues #toomuchmonkeybusiness
Now that tweet has been read over 76,000 times, and has featured on BBC News, Sky News, Radio X, the NME, BBC Radio 1 & 2 news, R4's The Today Show, The Independent, ITV News, CNN, The Guardian, and the New York Post. And he had even put me on a first-name basis. Watching a film for the evening went out the window. Though daunting, it was hilarious to see how my tweet had escalated into something huge, something I did not remotely expect or even wanted to happen, all because of one innocuous, charming reply. I could see him doffing his cap.
I realised Elvis was not somebody to reach out on Twitter often. A lot of people were congratulating me on such a coup. Though, I was pleased that it seemingly had put me in touch with a lot of cool journalists, and my sympathy towards Costello was shown in turn, more than anything I felt a little embarrassed. Seeing the tweet and my name across so many websites, with constant notifications of people reacting to Elvis' tweet drilling his point home, was fairly overwhelming for an relatively off-the-hook comment I would've deleted upon reaching sobriety anyway with few of my followers actually seeing it. As always online, there was some hurtful comments, but many were fair. Tweeting with swear words will always be a result of alcohol in my system. It was a mean, unnecessary comment. That evening I couldn't bring myself to listen to that CD I bought, and honestly I still haven't yet. I was unsure whether I was really only pointing out a similarity between two songs or I had launched some tirade of 'accusations', something deliberately antagonistic which the media sometimes portrayed but I was unsure of if I could be capable of. What I was sure of was that I was completely wrong. I admit it entirely. Pop music thrives on twists of the past. There's a strong case Oasis were unoriginal, as were the Sex Pistols - but that didn't stop them from making some good stuff (albeit only two albums for the former!). Hell, even my beloved Led Zeppelin plundered from everywhere in copious volumes, taking it much further than chord sequences. Nobody likes being shown up as a tit but it was well deserved. How could I behave like the honourable opinion-holder on music I wanted to be when I saw a simple guitar riff as theft? It was a stupid thing to say and I most certainly was looking for a 'take' for a reaction, but I wasn't banking on that one. It taught me a lot about the rules you should impose on yourself on social media, cause nobody else is going to do that for you. And when you've got somebody of the stature of Elvis bleedin Costello politely picking you up on it, that's a pretty glaring wake-up call.
Subsequently, I embraced the work of Olivia Rodrigo. I was silly for thinking, as an album built around the fall-out of a break-up, the world of Sour was far removed from my own (lack of) experiences. The album seems to have hit a nerve for so many in moments of heartbreak; in many ways it has those feelings of longing, melancholy and outright despair that I so regularly sought in Blood on the Tracks when nothing else would do. It is constructed totally around the teenage girl experience - which made me consider whether my comment was indebted somewhat to suppressed frustration at my own romantic situation, rushing out the kettle's funnel: "Where's my f***ing teenage dream", indeed. But what is totally interesting about Sour is how it's a message to young women, one which not been aired in a long time, that it's natural and okay to feel spiteful, hard-done-by, and misjudged in relationships. Male-fronted introspective, troubled blues records have been ten-a-penny for decades. Rodrigo runs with the content of notable tracks on Lorde's excellent Melodrama to provide an album refreshing to hear in it's sentiment, with themes perhaps lost in pop music since Blue, or Tapestry, simple yet consuming, revolving around those universal central 'chords' of sudden desertion, pangs of regret, and the futility of hoping for feelings to reignite, but from the side of today's young women. Olivia is carrying that torch from Amy Winehouse, PJ Harvey, Alanis Morissette, et al to a hugely receptive, empowered contemporary audience, with standards, beliefs, and ambition, far more than providing half an hour of easy-on-the-ears distractions. Me and Elvis are both fine with it.
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