This Salon bio of Elvis Costello starts with an explication of one of his most powerful songs, “Man out of Time.”
Funnily enough, “Man out of Time” is a love song. “To murder my love is a crime,” wails our burgher, inexplicably and unforgettably. And over those words, Costello and Emerick craft a production coup; Costello’s voice is echoed thickly, flattened electronically. The layered, slightly awry vocal tracks precisely limn the man’s fracturing persona. “But will you still love/The man out of time?” Costello’s singing here is definitive; I can’t think of an instance of rock vocalizing so simultaneously lost and controlled. You’d think he was singing about himself.
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