The song Elvis Costello called “the greatest single ever made”
Elvis Costello never wanted to take the easy route when making his music.
He knew that someone like him wasn’t the conventional idea of what a rock star should be, and yet the power of his songs came from the melodies rather than looking at any of the window dressing. But even if he was born out of the same places that punk came from, Costello was capable of taking songs in directions that would leave every other punk rocker delirious when they got done playing his records.
While people like David Lee Roth claimed that Costello was nothing but a critical darling with nothing up his sleeve, he never wanted to play up his nerdiness by any stretch. Behind all of that aggression on My Aim Is True were some incredibly powerful songs, and even if he doubled down on This Year’s Model, it was all in service to making the kind of music The Beatles would have been proud of making.
But no matter how hard he tried to sound aggressive, Costello was meant to be a ballad writer. He could get angry on a lot of tracks in the beginning stages, but ‘Alison’ is always going to be one of his signature tunes because of how perfectly structured it is. In the midst of ‘Watching the Detectives’ and ‘Mystery Dance’, this is the kind of slow-dance tune that any other artist dreams of writing, but that came from Costello going beyond traditional rock.
There were a lot more avenues for him to choose from, and since The Beatles were a major inspiration, it wasn’t hard for him to find his way to soul music after a while. The Miracles were as much of an inspiration as The Stones were for a lot of kids, and while Costello was never going to have that kind of voice, he could still marvel when he heard someone like Aretha Franklin belt in her prime.
If we look at the grand tradition of pop singers, Franklin really is the template for every single showstopping vocalist that came after her. She didn’t always need to soar to crazy high notes the same way Mariah Carey would do in the 1990s, but hearing her pump out tunes like ‘You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman’ and ‘Chain of Fools’ revolutionised the way that a female singer was presented at the time.
And when she made I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You, Costello couldn’t help but be absolutely knocked out by what he heard, saying, “That might be the greatest single ever made. It has this centre to it. It’s easily my favourite record by her.” And while the actual tune itself is fantastic, that’s not even close to being the finest performance that she ever did.
While you could throw a dart at Franklin’s discography and usually pick out something incredible, hearing her interpretations of Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’ and Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ bookending the record is one of the greatest statements anyone could have made. You have to remember this was still in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, so hearing a woman with a voice bigger than anyone in her path talking about the respect that she needs from everyone couldn’t have come at a better time.
Anyone interested in hearing the monumental records in rock history can easily find them in bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, but Franklin is proof that someone doesn’t need a loud guitar on their record to prove a point. All you need is the right song, the right singer, and the kind of passion that can hit people right in the heart from the minute it begins.
