After meeting at a show in New Orleans in the mid-1980s,[1] Roger McGuinn and Elvis Costello first collaborated on the latter's 1989 album, Spike, which was produced by mutual friend T-Bone Burnett.
McGuinn recalls, "He sent it to me from Ireland with a three-page letter saying what it was about, and told me he wanted me to sing it like a combination of 'My Back Pages' and 'Positively Fourth Street.
The latter commented, "We had a period a couple of years ago when we kept bumping into each other as one of us was checking into and the other out of, hotels then we kept meeting in Airport lounges; no one else in the whole music industry, just Elvis Costello.
He explained: Roger McGuinn's producer prevailed on him to straighten out the middle of 'You Bowed Down' and make it into 4/4 time which, to my mind, completely negated the whole point of that section of that song.
[8] In a 1996 review, Q wrote, "'You Bowed Down' apes The Byrds' high lonesome sound more accurately and with a sharper wit than Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty could manage in a month of Rickenbacker workshops".
[9] The Washington Post dubbed it "a rousing folk-rocker about moral compromise",[10] while the Bergen County Record noted that the band "proves its mettle" on the song's Byrdsy arrangement.
[11] The New Musical Express praised how Costello "pull[s] off convincingly Byrdsian moves on the delightful and mellifluous paisley piece 'You Bowed Down.
'"[12] Entertainment Weekly wrote, "The tenderly spat opener, 'The Other End of the Telescope,' and especially the Dylanesque 'You Bowed Down' rank with Costello’s finest put-down songs.