Elvis Costello & The Imposters - "Button My Lip" (From The Delivery Man) - #281

Elvis Costello & The Imposters - "Button My Lip" (From The Delivery Man)

Normally I don't have the time to write scorching reviews about an album, a song or whatever. I'd like to stay on the sunny side of my musical taste. But sometimes it just happens and there you are. I admit it, Elvis Costello (wether with The Imposters or not) was never my first tier choice. More like towards the back of the room. But not excluded and waiting outside the building like some others. I don't rteally know why I never got to grips with the man. His music just didn't interest me in the way that I had to have his releases. Not one. Recently I've bought a ton in mint condition in a local thrift store for chump change.

Amongst the stuff was "The Delivery Man" and whilst not all CDs were cringeworthy, on a scale of 1 to 10, nothing made it past 6. Unoriginal and lame comes to mind and the songs itself sounded like excuses to try his hand on something others did much better. Comes Friday and the first CD I play is "The Delivery Man", well, the first one and a half tracks anyway. I haven't heard a worse and redundant song for quite a while than "Button My Lip". Everything is wrong with that, I refuse to even consider this a song. It's helpless, not a trace of what makes a musical track a "musical" track. I've a weird section in my collection and there's some stuff where you scratch your head, but some of it is fun. This one is not.

                                  

Reading reviews after the fact, I don't seem to be the only one wondering why something like "Button My Lip" was released. But that's the problem with artists who produce a song, a painting, a film or whatever, on their own. They believe that their ideas are the greatest and there are no checks and balances. Some of them would need to listen, but their entourage consists probably of just yeasayers, afraid of the consequences. While the 4:51 crawled like what felt like an eternity, I became ever more irritated and I didn't need to listen to the rest of this botched attempt at a song. one and a half tracks into the proceedings I removed the CD and changed to QUI FM Blues'n'Rock (Radiostation from France) and God help me, the second song they played was Gary Moore's "Still Got The Blues". Certainly, they come in droves.

Cheers

Roland