Elvis Costello

Declan Patrick MacManus (born 25 August 1954), known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer, songwriter, record producer, author, and television host. According to Rolling Stone, Costello "reinvigorated the literate, lyrical traditions of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison with the raw energy and sass that were principal ethics of punk", noting the "construction of his songs, which set densely layered wordplay in an ever-expanding repertoire of styles". He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Grammy Awards and two Ivor Novello Awards, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 and into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016.

Born into a musical family, Costello was raised with knowledge and appreciation of a wide range of musical styles and an insider's view of the music business. His professional career as a musician coincided with the rise of punk rock in England. The primitivism brought into fashion by punk led Costello to disguise his musical knowledge at the beginning of his career, but his stylistic range has come to encompass R&B, country, jazz, baroque pop, Tin Pan Alley and classical music. His debut album, My Aim Is True (1977), produced no hit singles but contains some of his best-known songs, including the ballad "Alison". Costello's next two albums, This Year's Model (1978) and Armed Forces (1979), helped define the new wave genre. From late 1977 until early 1980, all of his singles reached the UK Top 30, including his biggest hit "Oliver's Army" (1979). He has had more modest commercial success in the US but has earned much critical praise. From 1977 until the early 2000s, Costello's albums regularly ranked high on The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll, with This Year's Model and Imperial Bedroom (1982) voted the best album of their respective years. His biggest US hit single, "Veronica" (1989), reached No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100.

For most of his early career, Costello performed with a backing band, the Attractions. He has released album-length collaborations with the classical ensemble the Brodsky Quartet, the songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint, and the hip-hop group the Roots. His current backing band are known as the Imposters. Costello has written more than a dozen songs with Paul McCartney and had a long-running songwriting partnership with Burt Bacharach. He has had hits with cover versions of songs, including Sam & Dave's "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down", Jerry Chesnut's "Good Year for the Roses", and Charles Aznavour's "She". One of his best-known songs, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding", was a cover version of a song by Nick Lowe's group Brinsley Schwarz, which had remained obscure until Costello's 1979 version. Costello's own songs have been recorded by artists including Linda Ronstadt, George Jones, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Dave Edmunds, Chet Baker, and Alison Krauss.

From 2008 to 2010, he hosted a television show, Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., on which he interviewed other musicians. In 2015, he published a well-received memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink. In 2019, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to music.

Elvis Costello was born Declan Patrick MacManus on 25 August 1954, at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, west London, the only child of a record shop worker and a jazz musician. Both parents were from the Liverpool area and had moved to London together.

Costello's father was of Irish descent and a Roman Catholic, while his mother was English and was raised a Congregationalist.

Costello's mother, Lillian MacManus (née Ablett, 1927–2021), was born and raised in Toxteth, Liverpool, the daughter of a gas-main layer and a mother who became increasingly disabled by rheumatoid arthritis as Lillian grew up. Responsible for caring for her younger brother and sick mother, Lillian left school at 13 and took the first of a series of jobs at music stores. After moving to London with her future husband Ross in 1951, she took a job in the record department in Selfridges department store and continued selling records through the 1960s. Even after she no longer worked selling records, Lillian maintained a keen interest in a wide variety of music, including the popular music of the day.

Costello's father, Ross MacManus, was a professional trumpet player and singer, born and raised in Birkenhead, across the River Mersey from Liverpool. He began his career in music in the late 1940s, playing trumpet in bebop bands in Birkenhead and Liverpool. He switched to playing trumpet and singing in modern jazz bands after moving to London in 1951. By 1954 he was sufficiently well known for his son's birth to be announced in the New Musical Express. From 1955 to 1968 he was a featured singer in the Joe Loss Orchestra, one of Britain's most popular big bands. Ross had a solo cabaret act from 1969 into the 1990s, playing workingmen's social clubs in Scotland, Wales, and the north of England. Ross recorded for small record labels under a variety of aliases, including Day Costello – Costello being Ross's paternal grandmother's maiden name. He also recorded advertising jingles.

Costello spent most of his childhood in Twickenham, in western Greater London, before moving to Liverpool with his mother in 1970. Costello was raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy until he was 14.

Costello's parents had separated by the time Costello was 10 years old, after which he was raised by his mother. Ross continued to be a significant presence in Costello's life, and the two remained close until Ross's death in 2011. Costello has said that a childhood spent watching his father work gave him an innate sense of how to be a musician but also an understanding that a career in music was a job like any other, requiring discipline and hard work.

Costello's parents never insisted he take music lessons or otherwise pushed him to follow in the family business. Instead, they raised him in a home filled with music, encouraged his musical curiosity, and supported his efforts to find his own way toward a career in music. Lillian told journalists that she knew before Costello was born he would have a career in music and that she listened to a broad range of music while she was pregnant with him with the intention of giving him an early start in music appreciation.

As a young child, Costello's musical influences came from his parents' record collection, which encompassed a wide range of styles but centred on traditional pop and jazz. Ross's job with the Joe Loss Orchestra required him to sing many of the pop hits of the day for the band's weekly radio show. To learn these songs, Ross received demonstration copies of the original artists' records, which he brought home to rehearse. When Costello grew old enough to have an interest in the current pop hits, Ross began giving him five or six of these demonstration records per week. Costello has said, "That's why I know so many songs".

Costello's early favourites among the hit-makers of the day were the Beatles. He has said that, having turned nine years old in 1963, he was exactly the right age to experience the full force of Beatles fandom as he grew up. He has described the Beatles as his biggest musical influence. Costello was also deeply impressed by the songs of his future collaborator Burt Bacharach, which he knew through the hits British artists Cilla Black and Dusty Springfield had with them.

Costello was a well-behaved if sometimes argumentative student, but not generally an outstanding one. Not having scored well enough on his eleven-plus exams to go on to grammar school, he attended Archbishop Myers secondary modern school in Hounslow and then a comprehensive school in Everton, Liverpool, for sixth form. Costello showed an early talent for writing. His mother told a journalist that, when Costello was 11 years old, his school entered him into a writing contest held by The Times intended for people aged 16 to 25, for which he won a prize. As he finished secondary school, he earned one A-level, in English, despite having made a firm decision to pursue a career in music a few months earlier and putting little effort into his final months of school.

Although he never had any alternative career plan, Costello had previously been reluctant to commit to a career in music, partly because his upbringing had made him aware of the potential pitfalls involved. The shock of witnessing a teenage friend's death in a traffic accident changed his mind. He would later write, "Suddenly, everything but music seemed like a waste of precious time".

Costello completed his formal education in 1972 and, still living at home with his mother, set out to find a job that would earn him a steady wage while he pursued a career in music. He soon took a job as a computer operator at the Midland Bank data centre, in the Merseyside town of Bootle, because, at £20 a week, it paid slightly better than other unskilled work he felt he was qualified for. According to Costello, the job consisted of essentially manual labour such as mounting tape reels and loading punched cards. Because the job involved frequent periods of waiting for the mainframe computers to complete their tasks before beginning them on the next one, it gave Costello time to write songs while at work. Except for a few months in 1973 when he worked as a clerk at the Midland Bank Putney branch, he continued to work full-time as a computer operator until a few weeks before his first album was released in July 1977.

Costello began writing songs and teaching himself to play guitar by age 14. To test his songs in front of an audience, he performed them in folk clubs that permitted amateur musicians to perform unpaid. He played these clubs regularly in London and continued in similar clubs when he moved to Liverpool at age 16, although folk music venues that welcomed original songs were scarcer in Liverpool than in London. By 17, he was occasionally being paid a little money. On the eve of the release of his debut album in 1977, Costello told Allan Jones that he had written hundreds of songs.

Early in 1972, Allan Mayes invited Costello to join his folk rock band Rusty. As other members left, Rusty soon became a duo, with Mayes and Costello singing and playing acoustic guitars. For a little over a year, Rusty played regularly in small venues like pubs, clubs, schools, and community centres, mostly in and around Liverpool, unpaid or for small amounts of money. In Mayes's estimation, Costello was already a talented songwriter, able to quickly write songs in a variety of styles, and could sing like Neil Young or Robbie Robertson. Mayes has said he introduced Costello to Brinsley Schwarz, a band that would be an important influence. While in Rusty, Costello wrote an early version of a song he would record in 1980 as "Ghost Train", although by then little remained of the Rusty version except the central narrative idea of a married double act making their way through the low end of show business.

By early 1973, Costello had determined that the music scene in Liverpool was too small to support his ambition to have a career in music, so he arranged to transfer from his job as a computer operator in the Midland Bank data centre in Bootle to a position as a clerk at the bank's Putney branch. Returning to Greater London, Costello moved into the same Twickenham flat where he had lived with his mother a few years earlier, by then occupied by his father Ross, Ross's second wife, and their infant son. When booking himself into London clubs, he began using the name Declan Costello, adopting a family name that Ross had once made a record under, because it was easier to spell and understand than MacManus when he spoke on the phone. Costello's first professional recording session, in the company of Ross, was for R. White's "Secret Lemonade Drinker" jingle. Ross sang the lead vocal while Costello played guitar and sang backing vocals.

Later in 1973, Costello formed Flip City with fellow folk rock fans. The group played the London pub rock circuit until the end of 1975, occasionally opening for more prominent bands such as Dr. Feelgood, but generally making little money and attracting little notice. Flip City's performances consisted of a mix of Costello's original songs (some of which would appear on his first two albums) and covers of rock, R&B and country songs. Costello wrote all but one of Flip City's original songs, did most of the singing and chose the cover songs they played. None of the other members of Flip City shared Costello's commitment to pursuing a career in music and some disapproved of his desire to make money from his music.

Costello became engaged to marry a former schoolmate in late 1973. By then he had found a job as a computer operator at the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics factory in North Acton, in northwest London, similar to the one he had in Bootle and with similarly low wages. By early 1975, Costello was a husband and father and was struggling to support his family. Flip City's live engagements added little to his income, rarely paying more than the band's expenses.

Costello recorded demos with Flip City at several sessions from mid-1974 until mid-1975, hoping to use them to get live bookings, secure a recording contract, or sell Costello's songs for other artists to record. All but the first of these sessions were at a small studio owned by Dave Robinson, future Stiff Records founder. Robinson later said that he thought Flip City "could not play at all" but Costello was talented and ought to "find a real band".

Even before disbanding Flip City in late 1975, Costello was writing songs he did not include in the band's repertoire. He recorded some of these as solo demos for Dave Robinson in mid-1975. For the next year, he shopped these and other solo demos to music publishers and record companies, hoping to be hired either as a songwriter or a recording artist. He sent out as many as 20 songs on a single tape to publishers, not yet realising that no publisher would have the patience to listen to so many songs. Sometimes he went to publishers' offices to perform his songs in person. None of this generated anything but rejections until he began creating "show reels" of no more than six of what he believed were his most attention-getting songs, selected to appeal to the recipient of each demo tape.

By February 1976, Costello was booking himself into clubs as a solo act under the name D.P. Costello, D.P. being his initials and a nickname he was sometimes called by his family. While working as D.P. Costello, he learned to sing and play guitar very loudly and developed a forceful stage presence, although he was still playing to small audiences for very little money. Few of the songs he had played with Flip City were included in these performances. Instead, he was debuting some of the songs that would start to get the attention of the music industry, such as "Mystery Dance" and "Wave a White Flag". Costello included both songs on a six-track demo tape he sent to London radio presenter Charlie Gillett, who thought "Wave a White Flag" was the best of the six. Gillett played several songs from the tape on his radio show later that year, the first time any Costello song received airplay.

Sometime in 1976, lack of money forced Costello, his wife and their toddler son to move in with relatives near Heathrow Airport, on the far west side of Greater London. This meant Costello's commute to work in North Acton took him past the Hoover Building in Perivale. Around the same time, he was starting to become aware of the nascent punk movement, although he would not hear any of the British punk bands until they began releasing records. Songs he wrote during this period included "Hoover Factory" and "Radio Sweetheart", which became the B-side of his first single.

In mid-August 1976, Costello was signed to the independent label Stiff Records. Following a successful test-session in mid-September 1976 at Pathway Studios, an inexpensive studio in North London, Stiff agreed to finance more sessions for Costello with Clover, an American country-rock band from Marin County, California, as the backing band. Throughout late November or early December, Costello rehearsed with Clover at Headley Grange in East Hampshire, after which he recorded the songs properly with the band the next day at Pathway. The sessions were spaced over several weeks to accommodate his full-time work schedule and Stiff's tight finances. My Aim Is True was recorded and mixed in six four-hour sessions for a total cost of about £1,000. The sessions were produced by Nick Lowe, Stiff's first artist and in-house producer.

By February 1977, Stiff founders Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson, who were now Costello's managers, had given him his new stage name, Elvis. The reference to Elvis Presley, who was still alive at the time, was intended to get attention. The managers also developed Costello's image, particularly the large black glasses. Costello's first single, "Less than Zero", was released at the end of March 1977. It received a few brief, mixed reviews in the British music press and sold very few copies. Two further singles, "Alison" and "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes", also sold poorly; the former would become one of his best-regarded and best-known songs. Nevertheless, Costello was receiving increasingly prominent, positive coverage in the British music press.

My Aim Is True was released in the UK in July 1977. Its delayed release was because Stiff had wanted to release records by other artists who seemed more tied to transient music trends and then because of legal difficulties with Stiff's distributor, Island Records. The album received extensive, favourable coverage in the UK music press, and reached No. 14 on the UK Albums Chart within a few weeks of its release. Around this time, Costello recorded "Watching the Detectives" at Pathway with the bassist Andrew Bodnar and the drummer Steve Goulding of the Rumour, with organ and piano overdubs by keyboardist Steve Nieve. The song was a departure from the sound of My Aim Is True, displaying reggae-style rhythms. It was inspired by the Clash's debut album and by Bernard Herrmann's Hitchcock scores. Costello later called it his "first real record". It was released in mid-October as a non-album single in the UK, reaching No. 15, becoming Costello's first single to chart in any country; it appeared on the US version of My Aim Is True, released in early November through Columbia Records. It charted at No. 32 on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and was named among the best albums of the year by US music critics.

In mid-June 1977, Costello held auditions for a bassist and keyboardist for a backing band for a tour to promote My Aim Is True, wanting a sparser sound than on the album. Pete Thomas, formerly of pub-rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers, who were managed by Riviera, agreed to be drummer, although Thomas was then living in California and needed to be brought back to England. Goulding and Bodnar also participated in these audition sessions, so that Costello could test how the musicians auditioning played as part of a band. Chosen were bassist Bruce Thomas (no relation to Pete), who was 28 years old and had ten years' experience in professional bands, the most successful being the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver; and keyboardist Steve Nieve (then Steve Nason), a 19-year-old student at the Royal College of Music who had formal musical training but no experience in any kind of pop group. The band, soon named the Attractions, would be Costello's touring and recording band for the next seven years.

When Costello began touring the US in mid-November, he received prominent coverage in the US press, even though he played venues holding fewer than a thousand people. By late 1977, Costello had moved from Stiff Records to Radar Records, a new label founded by an associate of Jake Riviera. Riviera had split from Dave Robinson and was now Costello's sole manager. For the next year and a half, Costello's records were released on Radar in Britain.

Costello recorded his second album and his first with the Attractions, This Year's Model, during short breaks from touring, from November 1977 through January 1978. Produced by Nick Lowe, it was recorded at Eden Studios, in west London, in eleven days. Inspirations for the album's sound included 1960s beat groups like the Who, the Kinks and Small Faces, as well as contemporary acts like Talking Heads, but the biggest influence was the Rolling Stones' album Aftermath (1966).

"(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" was released as the album's first single in early March 1978, reaching No. 16 on the UK singles chart. The second single, "Pump It Up", which reached No. 24, was written later, while Costello was on tour with other Stiff acts, in reaction to what he later called his "first exposure to idiotic rock and roll decadence". Upon release in March, This Year's Model entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 4. The US version of the album dropped "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" and "Night Rally", a song written in response to the rise of the British National Front, and replaced them with "Radio Radio". The US release reached No. 30 on the Billboard chart but spent fewer weeks on the chart than My Aim Is True. "Radio Radio" was released as a non-album single in the UK in October 1978, where it reached No. 29. This Year's Model placed first in the annual Pazz & Jop poll in the Village Voice.

Throughout 1978, Costello and the Attractions continued touring Britain, Europe and North America, playing larger venues and debuting new songs that Costello was writing for his next album. In July 1978, Costello performed at the Danish Roskilde Festival, topping the bill with three other artists.

Costello's 1980 Get Happy!! album featured a sound based on vintage American soul music. Some songs marked a distinct change in mood from the angry, frustrated tone of his first three albums to a more upbeat, happy manner. The single, "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down", was a rendition of a Sam and Dave song. Lyrically, the songs are full of Costello's signature wordplay. His only 1980 appearance in North America was at the Heatwave festival in August near Toronto.

In January 1981, Costello released Trust amidst growing tensions within the Attractions. The single "Watch Your Step" was released in the US only and played live on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show, and received airplay on FM rock radio. In the UK, the single "Clubland" scraped the lower reaches of the UK singles chart; follow-up single "From a Whisper to a Scream" (a duet with Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze) became the first Costello single in over four years to completely miss the chart. Costello also co-produced Squeeze's 1981 album East Side Story (with Roger Béchirian) and performed backing vocals on the group's hit "Tempted".

October saw the release of Almost Blue, a cover album of country music including songs written by Hank Williams ("Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do?)"), Merle Haggard ("Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down"), Gram Parsons ("How Much I Lied") and George Jones ("Brown to Blue"). The album received mixed reviews. The first pressings of the record in the UK bore a sticker with the message: "WARNING: This album contains country & western music and may cause a radical reaction in narrow minded listeners". Almost Blue did spawn a surprise UK hit single with a version of Jerry Chesnut's "Good Year for the Roses", which reached number six. Costello had long been an avid country music fan and has cited Jones as his favourite country singer. He had appeared on Jones's duet album My Very Special Guests, contributing "Stranger in the House", which they later performed together on a 1981 HBO special dedicated to Jones.

Imperial Bedroom (1982) featured lavish production by Geoff Emerick, engineer of several Beatles records. Robert Palmer wrote "the music is a sumptuous mélange of pop styles, from Beatles-baroque to Phil Spector Wall-of-Sound to torch-song intimacy." It remains one of his most critically acclaimed records, but again it failed to produce any hit singles—"You Little Fool" and the critically acclaimed "Man Out of Time" both failed to reach the Top 40 in the UK. Costello collaborated with Chris Difford, also of Squeeze, to write the song "Boy With a Problem". Costello has said he disliked the marketing pitch for the album. Imperial Bedroom also featured Costello's song "Almost Blue", inspired by the music of jazz singer and trumpeter Chet Baker. Baker later recorded his own version of the song. Imperial Bedroom was promoted with the tagline "Masterpiece?" It placed first on the Pazz & Jop poll.

In 1983, he released Punch the Clock, featuring female backing vocal duo Afrodiziak and four-piece horn section the TKO Horns, alongside the Attractions. Clive Langer (who co-produced with Alan Winstanley), provided Costello with a melody which eventually became "Shipbuilding", which featured a trumpet solo by Baker and ironic commentary on the Falklands War. Prior to the release of Costello's original, a cover of the song was a minor UK hit for Soft Machine founder Robert Wyatt.

In 1985, Costello sang the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid. He introduced it as an "old northern English folk song" and invited the audience to sing the chorus. He joined T Bone Burnett for the single "The People's Limousine" under the moniker of the Coward Brothers. He sang with Annie Lennox on "Adrian" from the Eurythmics record Be Yourself Tonight. Costello produced Rum Sodomy & the Lash by Celtic punk band the Pogues. He said his "task was to capture them in their dilapidated glory."

Growing antipathy between Costello and Bruce Thomas contributed to the Attractions' first split in 1986 when Costello was preparing to make a comeback. Working in the US with Burnett, a band containing a number of Elvis Presley's sidemen (including James Burton and Jerry Scheff), and minor input from the Attractions, he produced King of America, an acoustic guitar-driven album with a country sound. It was billed as performed by "The Costello Show featuring the Attractions and Confederates" in the UK and Europe and "The Costello Show featuring Elvis Costello" in North America. Around this time he legally changed his name back to Declan MacManus, adding Aloysius as an extra middle name. Costello retooled his upcoming tour to allow for multiple nights in each city, playing one night with the Confederates, one night with the Attractions, and one night solo acoustic. In May 1986, he performed at Self Aid, a benefit concert held in Dublin that focused on the chronic unemployment which was widespread in Ireland.

Later that year, Costello returned to the studio with the Attractions and recorded Blood & Chocolate, which was lauded for a post-punk fervour not heard since 1978's This Year's Model. It also marked the return of producer Nick Lowe, who had produced Costello's first five albums. While Blood & Chocolate failed to chart a hit single of any significance, it did produce what has since become one of Costello's signature concert songs, "I Want You". On this album, Costello adopted the alias Napoleon Dynamite, the name he later attributed to the character of the emcee that he played during the vaudeville-style tour to support Blood & Chocolate. (The pseudonym had previously been used in 1982, when the B-side single "Imperial Bedroom" was credited to Napoleon Dynamite & the Royal Guard. Jared Hess, creator of the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite.) After the tour for Blood & Chocolate, Costello split from the Attractions, due mostly to lingering tensions between him and Bruce Thomas. Costello continued to work with another Attraction, Pete Thomas, as a session musician for future releases.

Costello's recording contract with Columbia Records ended after Blood & Chocolate. In 1987 he released a compilation album, Out of Our Idiot, on his UK label Demon Records; this consists of B-sides, side projects, and unreleased songs from recording sessions from 1980 to 1987. He signed a new contract with Warner Bros. and in early 1989 released Spike, which spawned his biggest single in the US, the Top 20 hit "Veronica", one of several songs Costello co-wrote with Paul McCartney. At the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards on 6 September in Los Angeles, "Veronica" won the MTV Award for Best Male Video.

Costello and McCartney wrote several songs together over a short period, which were released over a number of years:

In 1991, Costello released Mighty Like a Rose, which featured the single "The Other Side of Summer". With Richard Harvey, he co-composed the score for Alan Bleasdale's mini-series G.B.H.. The score secured them a BAFTA.

In 1993, Costello collaborated with the Brodsky Quartet on The Juliet Letters. It was inspired by a piece in The Guardian about letters to Shakespeare's Juliet Capulet. Cellist Jacqueline Thomas notes "quotes from or references to music we love – and varied musical styles to suit the songs, from Bachian suspensions in 'Deliver Us', to flamenco riffs in 'Romeo’s Seance', a hurdy-gurdy effect built from a Bartók chord in 'Who Do You Think You Are?'"

During this period, he wrote a full album's worth of material for Wendy James, and these songs became the tracks on her 1993 solo album Now Ain't the Time for Your Tears. Costello returned to rock and roll the following year with a project that reunited him with the Attractions, Brutal Youth. In 1995, he released Kojak Variety, an album of cover songs recorded five years earlier, and followed in 1996 with an album of songs originally written for other artists, All This Useless Beauty. This was the final album of original material that he issued under his Warner Bros. contract, and also his final album with the Attractions. He appeared on Desert Island Discs. His choices included Frank Sinatra's "I've Got You Under My Skin", Mozart's aria "Non so più cosa son" and Duke Ellington's cover of Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count". His first choice was Beethoven's "String Quartet No. 16".

In 1994, he duetted with Tony Bennett on "They Can't Take That Away from Me" on MTV Unplugged, appearing on the album released from the broadcast.

In the spring of 1996, Costello played a series of intimate club dates, backed only by Steve Nieve on the piano, in support of All This Useless Beauty. An ensuing mid-year tour with the Attractions proved to be the death knell, with relations between Costello and bassist Bruce Thomas at a breaking point, Costello announced that the current tour would be the Attractions' last. The quartet performed their final US show in Seattle, Washington on 1 September 1996, before wrapping up their tour in Japan. Costello continued to work frequently with Attractions Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas; eventually, both became members of Costello's new back-up band, The Imposters.

In 2000, Costello produced a list of "500 essential albums for a happy life" for Vanity Fair. From 2001 to 2005, Costello re-issued his back catalogue in the US, from My Aim Is True (1977) to All This Useless Beauty (1996), on double-disc collections on the Rhino Records label. These releases, which each contained second discs of bonus material, ultimately fell out of print by 2007 after Universal Music acquired the rights to Costello's catalogue. Universal subsequently released new deluxe editions of My Aim Is True and This Year's Model with new bonus material of full-length concerts from the time of each album's release. These deluxe editions also fell out of print and Universal has reverted to re-releasing Costello's pre-1987 albums in their original context without bonus material. His accompanying essays were well-received.

In 2000, Costello appeared at the Town Hall, New York, in Steve Nieve's opera Welcome to the Voice, alongside Ron Sexsmith and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. Ann Powers wrote "A new patch on the border between art music and pop is being cultivated, and Elvis Costello is its chief gardener. Even when he was an angry young punk, Mr. Costello wrote unusually intricate melodies and lyrics. Now, at 45, he seeds his compositions with overt jazz and classical influences and uses his popularity to promote the work of equally ambitious hybridizers."

In 2001, Costello was artist-in-residence at UCLA and wrote the music for a new ballet. He produced and appeared on For the Stars, an album of pop songs with the classical singer Anne Sofie von Otter. He released When I Was Cruel in 2002 on Island Records. He toured with a new band, the Imposters (essentially the Attractions but with a different bass player, Davey Faragher, formerly of Cracker).

On 23 February 2003, Costello, along with Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt and Dave Grohl, performed a version of the Clash's "London Calling" at the 45th Grammy Awards ceremony, in honour of Clash frontman Joe Strummer, who had died the previous December. In March, Elvis Costello & the Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In May, he announced his engagement to Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall, whom he had seen in concert and then met backstage at the Sydney Opera House. That September, he released North, an album of piano-based ballads concerning the breakdown of his former marriage, and his falling in love with Krall.

"The Scarlet Tide" (co-written by Costello and T Bone Burnett and used in the film Cold Mountain) was nominated for a 2004 Academy Award; he performed it at the awards ceremony with Alison Krauss, who sang the song on the official soundtrack. Costello co-wrote many songs on Krall's 2004 CD, The Girl in the Other Room, the first of hers to feature several original compositions.

Costello released the album National Ransom in the autumn of 2010.

On 26 February 2012, Costello paid tribute to Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen, who were the recipients of the first annual PEN Awards for songwriting excellence, at the JFK Presidential Library, in Boston, Massachusetts. In September 2013 Costello released Wise Up Ghost, a collaboration with the Roots.

On 25 October 2013, Costello was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the New England Conservatory.

In 2012, he played ukulele, mandolin, guitar and added backing vocals on Diana Krall's 11th studio album, Glad Rag Doll (as "Howard Coward"). On 10 September 2013, he played during the Apple September 2013 Event after the introduction of iTunes Radio, iPhone 5C and 5S at Town Hall, at the Apple campus.

He sang on "Funny Little Tragedy" on Gov't Mule's album Shout! (2013). In March 2014, Costello recorded Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes with Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James, and Marcus Mumford. During the 2016 Detour, he performed with Larkin Poe.

Since the early 1980s, Costello has written about music for publications including Hot Press, Details, Mojo, Musician, NME, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. He has also written several articles about football (soccer), as an avid and knowledgeable fan, for the Times of London. Jim Windolf, who worked with Costello, said his "copy was clean, elegant, and ready to run".

Costello has written liner notes for releases by artists including Gram Parsons, the Fairfield Four, Dusty Springfield, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Burt Bacharach, and Bill Frisell. He has written forewords to books by Geoff Emerick, Loretta Lynn, and Wanda Jackson.

In 1993, Costello began reissuing his catalogue of albums from 1977 through 1986, on Rykodisc, and wrote detailed liner notes for each reissued album. Reviewers praised these liner notes as frank and charming. In 2001, he began a second round of reissues, this time of his catalogue from 1977 through 1996, on Rhino Entertainment, and wrote even more detailed liner notes. Goldmine said the Rhino liner notes brought "a wealth of insight into the songs and the creative process itself" and that "liner notes simply don't get any better than this". Pitchfork called them "truly fascinating". Several journalists noted that, at a total of 60,000 words, the Rhino liner notes amounted to a serialised memoir. In 2012, Slate magazine published a book review of the Rhino liner notes in which it called them "one of the best rock-star memoirs of the last decade".

In 2015, Costello published Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, a memoir that had little overlap with his reissue liner notes. In the book, he recounted his life in music and traced parallels between his own experiences and those of his father and grandfather, both of whom were musicians. The book received positive reviews from prominent publications, although some noted that the writing quality was uneven and it might have been improved by being shorter, having a narrower more thematic focus, or both. Billboard criticised its nonlinear structure, its relative lack of emphasis on Costello's pop-star period, and its lack of details about his romantic relationships. The book reached number seven on the New York Times Best Seller list. It was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize, a British award for excellence in writing about music. The audiobook, narrated by Costello, was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Costello has played himself or semi-fictionalised versions of himself in movies and television shows, including Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), The Simpsons (2002), Frasier (2003), Two and a Half Men (2004), 30 Rock (2009), Treme (2010), and Sesame Street (2011). He has also played more character-based roles, such as the title character's eccentric brother in screenwriter Alan Bleasdale's television series Scully (1984), an inept magician in Bleasdale's movie No Surrender (1985), a teacher at an impoverished school in the movie Prison Song (2001), and the title character's father in the children's animated series The Adventures of Pete the Cat (2017). In 1995, he appeared as a guest pundit on the British football commentary television show Football Italia.

In 2003, Costello substituted for an ailing David Letterman as the host of Late Show with David Letterman, making him the only musical guest of the show to have served as guest host. Costello's performance on that show led to interest in developing a music-orientated talk show with him as the host, which came to fruition a few years later.

In 2008, Costello began production on Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., a show on which he interviewed and performed songs with other musicians. The series was executive-produced by Elton John, who also appeared as a guest, and other guests included Tony Bennett, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Bono and the Edge of U2, opera singer Renée Fleming, and former president (and accomplished saxophonist) Bill Clinton. It ran for 20 episodes over two seasons from 2008 through 2010, and aired on Sundance Channel in the US, CTV in Canada, and Channel 4 in the UK. The show was received favourably in the US, with reviewers praising Costello's ability to get his guests to reveal insights into their creative processes and calling him a "deeply knowledgeable, erudite and witty host". In Canada, the show won a Gemini Award for Best Talk Series. In Britain, it was aired in an overnight time slot and largely ignored.

Costello appeared on the last episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, performing his song "Jump Up". He joined Paul McCartney, Jon Batiste and Colbert for a performance of the Beatles's "Hello, Goodbye".

Costello has no full siblings. He has four half-brothers from his father's second marriage, all of whom are musicians.

In November 1974, Costello married Mary Burgoyne. Costello has said he had hoped to marry Burgoyne since he was 14 years old and they were at school together in London, although they did not begin dating until four years later, when Costello moved back to London after living with his mother in Liverpool for two and a half years. They have one child, Matthew MacManus, born in early 1975. Costello's rapid rise to fame put a strain on their marriage almost immediately. The couple separated in early 1978 but reconciled the following year. They separated permanently in mid-1984 and finalised their divorce in 1988. Costello has said that his inability to remain faithful in his first marriage, and the emotional turmoil it caused him, has been a major inspiration for his songs.

In July 2018, Costello announced that he had been successfully treated for a cancerous growth six weeks earlier, but needed to cancel the remaining six dates of his European tour to continue recovering from the surgery. Costello said he had underestimated how much time he would need to recover. He resumed performing in September 2018.

In 2017, Costello helped establish the Musician Treatment Foundation as a member of its board of directors. The foundation, which is based in Austin, Texas, helps under- and uninsured professional musicians receive free orthopaedic care for upper limb injuries. He performed concerts for the foundation's benefit in October 2017 and December 2022.

Costello sits on the advisory board of the board of directors of the Jazz Foundation of America, which provides emergency financial support and other services to working and retired musicians.

A pescatarian since the early 1980s, Costello says he was moved to reject meat after seeing the documentary The Animals Film (1982), which also helped inspire his song "Pills and Soap" from 1983's Punch the Clock. In January 2013, Costello teamed up with Paul McCartney to create an advertisement campaign backing vegetarian foods produced by the Linda McCartney Foods brand.

Costello is considered by experts in pop and rock music to be one of the best songwriters of his generation. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic summarised Costello as the "most evocative, innovative, and gifted songwriter since Bob Dylan, with songs that offer highly personal takes on love and politics". In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him 24th on their list of the greatest songwriters of all time, noting his "almost unparalleled versatility". When he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016, the induction announcement said the impact of Costello's songs "far out-distanced their commercial performance".

Costello's My Aim Is True is widely considered one of the best debut albums in rock history, and influential on rock and punk music. Although Costello never applied the term "new wave" to his music, Costello's early records helped defined the genre. AllMusic said, "Costello's early albums changed the face of pop music by harnessing punk's energy to a leaner, more incisive aesthetic that included pop hooks, virtually inventing new wave in the process". In their 2013 list of greatest albums of all time, NME described This Year's Model as "defining the British new wave". In their 2009 list of greatest albums of all time, Rolling Stone said "the keyboard-driven sound of 'Accidents Will Happen' helped define new wave".

Musical artists with little connection to new wave have also acknowledged influence by and appreciation of Costello. George Harrison praised Costello in 1979, saying, "Elvis Costello is very good – very good melodies, good chord changes. I'm pleased about his success." Bruce Springsteen said Costello's comments in the press criticising Springsteen's early songs as excessively romantic led him to write darker songs for his 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. Thom Yorke of Radiohead called Blood & Chocolate "the album that made me change the way I thought about recording and writing music [and] lyrics". Liz Phair, in her appreciation of Costello for Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, wrote: "I'd pay a great amount of money to audit a course taught by him." Suzanne Vega called Costello one of the "melodic geniuses" whose music she uses to "stretch my sense of melody".

Prominent artists in other fields have taken inspiration from Costello. Peter Blake featured Costello prominently in his 2012 reworking of the cover he created for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blake said he included people he admired and who had contributed to British culture since he created the original work. Filmmaker and comedian Judd Apatow has called Costello "a gigantic inspiration to me" and has suggested that he and other comedians are "fanatical" about Costello's music because of the "spirit of standing up for what you believe in and the humor" in it. Satirist and television host Stephen Colbert has described Costello as "probably my favourite rock artist" and said he sees parallels between his own humour and Costello's "wry, sardonic" songs. Novelist Bret Easton Ellis titled his 1985 novel Less Than Zero after a Costello song and its 2010 sequel Imperial Bedrooms after a Costello album. Ellis has said Costello was once his "idol". The title of Nick Hornby's 1995 novel High Fidelity is derived from Costello's 1980 song of the same name. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons pay homage to Costello in their comic series Watchmen. The epigraph for the second issue is from Costello's "The Comedians": "I should be drinking a toast to absent friends/ Instead of these comedians."

Grammy Award, Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, "I Still Have That Other Girl" (1998)

Grammy Award, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, Look Now (2019)

Grammy Hall of Fame, My Aim Is True (2007)

MTV Video Music Award, Best Male Video, "Veronica" (1989)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with the Attractions (2003)

Doctor of Music, University of Liverpool (2008)

Doctor of Music, New England Conservatory of Music (2013)