In his autobiography, Elvis Costello wrote that the popular idea of him early on as an angry man was just a trick of physiology. He wrote: “It seems that the space between my two front teeth, which made Jane Birkin, Ray Davies, and Jerry Lewis so appealing, has had the effect of making half of what I say sound like a provocation or an insult.” It’s a funny self-observation, but let’s be real — as a writer as well as a singer, Costello gave the world a little help with that perception.
He has been a provocateur, in all the best senses, and when he doled out insults, as he did in a significant part of his early catalog, especially, he had the thoughtfulness behind it to make it feel like the young man or woman (or world) that was on the receiving end seem like they deserved it. There was a sense of anger in his songs that felt gratifying, because he had serious observations about how society and relationships went wrong, and a playful wit to go with the wrath. Even in singing mostly relationship songs, he felt like a kind of protest singer.
What we hear now about the “culture of grievance” feels wrong in politics, but it was great for rock ‘n’ roll at the time. Eventually, of course, Costello revealed multi-faceted personas that included such once-unthinkable exercises as actual requited-love songs — and a greater ability to span and traverse genres than anyone else in known music history, including partial or whole albums dipping into country, jazz, neo-cla.