Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on. Elvis Costello -
Qualifying Songs: I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea, Oliver's Army, Pump it Up
I always assumed that Oliver's Army was about Oliver Cromwell but Costello himself explained it was an anti-occupation song about the troubles in Ireland and other military occupations around the globe. This song was never banned, or, as the BBC like to put it, 'restricted' since its release in 1979 despite the blatant use of the N-word although they decided to just blank that word out instead.
Never really fitting into the punk or new wave scene, Costello was always a bit of an outsider and his 3 top 10 hits in a 30 year career shows he never really built on his great start and has just been background noise ever since 1981 when he last troubled the business end of the charts.
Costello is still releasing songs today but all the big hits came in the late 70s and 'Pump It Up' has a great rock riff and he has admitted to lifting the tune from Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'.
'I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea' has a great bassline running through it and Costello's three big hits are enough to get him a place in my Museum although why he never wanted to go to Chelsea was never suitably settled but as anyone who has been to Stamford Bridge will agree, nobody can blame him.
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