"My Aim is True" Turns 40

22 July 1977 to 22 July 2017

"It was rather like recording in a telephone booth. Overdubs were barely an option. Everything is heard pretty much as it was played."

--Elvis Costello, via Twitter on July 22nd

L.I.N.K.S. (XVI): MAIT Turns 40

In this edition of L.I.N.K.S. (hyperlinks that Lure, Intrigue, Nurture, Kindle, or Stimulate), we focus on the 40th anniversary of the release of "My Aim Is True," Elvis Costello's debut album.

"Recorded in four six-hour late-night sessions in a London eight-track studio, My Aim Is True was the debut album by the audaciously named soon-to-be 22-year-old singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, née Declan Patrick McManus. Produced by Nick Lowe, former bassist for the pub-rock band Brinsley Schwarz and a labelmate on the cheeky upstart indie Stiff Records, it reportedly cost a mere £2,000 to make, and was released in the U.K. on July 22, 1977."

--Best Classic Bands

My favorite links:

1. Paste features Elvis saying he’s actually not angry as angrily as humanly possible

2. Billboard does the impossible and ranks the album's tracks

3. Trunkworthy pays homage to a track that didn't make the album

4. Treblezine focuses on the artist's professed motives of revenge and guilt

And finally,

5. Spill takes the story to a personal level, drawing from the recent Costello autobiography

“I’ve always told people that I wrote ‘Alison’ after seeing a beautiful checkout girl at the local supermarket,” writes Costello in Unfaithful Music on perhaps the most well-known song on My Aim is True; after all the album takes its name from a line in the song. 

“Now she was punching in the prices on cans of beans at a cash register and looking as if all the hopes and dreams of her youth were draining away. All that would be left would soon be squandered to a ruffian who told her convenient lies and trapped her still further.”