Elvis Costello - Alison

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. I'm gonna be on tour playing some shows this fall. I'm gonna be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm gonna be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm gonna be in conversation about my music, moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Baynton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm gonna be on tour supporting S. Carey. We're gonna be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live. I wanna give a shout-out to Gusto for sponsoring today's episode, 'cause when you run a small business like Song Exploder, you don't just have to do your regular job, you also have to be the hiring manager, the payroll department, the benefits team. There's just a level of admin that I know I didn't really think I was signing up for. But Gusto takes a few of those jobs off your plate quickly and seamlessly. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote friendly, and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. There are options for nearly every budget, with unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price and no hidden fees or surprises. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/songexploder and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/songexploder. Once more, that's gusto.com/songexploder. This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn Ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/songexploder. That's linkedin.com/songexploder. Terms and conditions apply. [gentle music] Elvis Costello is a singer and songwriter whose career spans five decades and over 30 albums. He's a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He's won Grammy Awards and Ivor Novello Awards, a BAFTA, and he's on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest songwriters of all time. He put out his first album, My Aim is True, in 1977, and this month, he released a 49th anniversary edition of the album. So for this episode, I spoke to Elvis Costello about the making of the song "Alison" from that debut album. Coming up, you'll hear the isolated tracks from the original recording, as well as some additional parts that didn't make the cut. And in discussing the origin story of this song, we also ended up talking about the origin story of Elvis Costello himself.

["Alison" playing] Alison, I know this world is killing you. Oh, Alison, my aim is true.

Could I just ask you to introduce yourself?