Declan Patrick MacManus (born 25 August 1954), better known by his stage name 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.

Costello has had hits with covers 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".

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.

Elvis Costello was born Declan Patrick MacManus,[b] 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.

[89][90] Flip City 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.

"[105] After Costello became successful, Flip City's demos were widely bootlegged, often misleadingly labelled to imply they were outtakes from the My Aim Is True sessions or otherwise affiliated with Stiff Records.

[137] Costello still held a full-time office job,[108] so the sessions were spaced over several weeks to accommodate his work schedule and Stiff's tight finances.

[139] Producer Nick Lowe, recording engineer Barry Farmer and Clover bassist John Ciambotti have all said they found Costello confident, well-prepared, and mature beyond his years during the making of the album.

[199] Like This Year's Model, the album's influences came from the music Costello and the Attractions listened to while touring, from the Berlin-era records of David Bowie and Iggy Pop to ABBA and Kraftwerk.

[198] Just before the album's completion in late September, Costello and the Attractions played to an audience of 150,000 in Brockwell Park, south London, as part of the second Rock Against Racism music festival.

The argument culminated in Costello disparaging James Brown and Ray Charles with racially charged insults, in comments he would later call "the exact opposite of my true feelings".

[228] 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".

[234][240][235] Punch the Clock also generated an international hit in the single "Everyday I Write the Book", aided by a music video featuring lookalikes of Prince Charles and Princess Diana undergoing domestic strife in a suburban home.

That year, Costello also produced Rum Sodomy & the Lash for the Irish punk/folk band the Pogues and he sang with Annie Lennox on the song "Adrian" from the Eurythmics record Be Yourself Tonight.

Working in the U.S. 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.

He signed a new contract with Warner Bros. and in early 1989 released Spike, which spawned his biggest single in the U.S., the Top 20 hit (it reached number 19) "Veronica",[245] one of several songs Costello co-wrote with Paul McCartney.

[257] In a studio recording of Nieve's opera Welcome to the Voice (2006, Deutsche Grammophon), Costello interpreted the character of Chief of Police, with Barbara Bonney, Robert Wyatt, Sting and Amanda Roocroft, and the album reached No.

[258] In a performance in 2007 directed by Kasper Bech Holten at the Opera's studio theatre (Takelloftet), finished songs were interspersed with pieces from Costello's 1993 collaborative classical album The Juliet Letters, featuring Danish soprano Sine Bundgaard as Lind.

In May 2009, Costello made a surprise cameo appearance on-stage at the Beacon Theatre in New York as part of Spinal Tap's Unwigged and Unplugged show, singing their fictional 1965 hit "Gimme Some Money" with the band backing him up.

In December 2009, Costello portrayed The Shape on the album Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a collaboration between rock singer John Mellencamp and novelist Stephen King.

In February 2010, Costello appeared in the live cinecast of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, singing some of his own songs, and participating in many of the show's other musical and acting performances.

[265] On 26 February 2012, Costello paid tribute to music legends 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.

[281][282][283] In November 2024, Costello and T Bone Burnett released a scripted comedy audio series on Audible, directed by Christopher Guest, as the Coward Brothers, characters the two created in the 1980s.

"[322] The Washington Post praised it as having more in common with Frank McCourt's memoir Angela's Ashes than Mötley Crüe's The Dirt and said it was more enjoyable than Keith Richards' Life and Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One.

[327] Costello has played himself or fictional characters very similar to himself in movies and television shows including Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999),[328] The Simpsons (2002),[329] Frasier (2003),[330] Two and a Half Men (2004),[331] 30 Rock (2009),[332] Treme (2010),[333] and Sesame Street (2011).

[340] 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.

[379] 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.

[385] 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.

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.