(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover / Leonard Bentley)
Tue 7 April 2026 9:42, UK
Snotty, snarling, glorious punk was a life-changing lightning bolt. It was an insurrectionary call to arms to many.
It was a musical movement that sought to upend the stultifying charts long unmoored from what made rock ‘n roll exciting. It thrust music-making away from the public school’s gatekeeping grip and threatened to light a fire under a fusty 1970s society still yet to finally shake off the class oppressions from the previous century.
Yet for many, the ‘year zero’ wave that surged from the streets and into the charts was more a means to an end, the perfect foil for a host of young songwriters attracted to punk’s urgent energy but too wedded to the artists of yesteryear to ever count themselves among the movement’s most committed combatants.
Just as no one has any doubt that The Cars’ Ric Ocasek or the Squeeze songwriting partnership would be penning songs not too dissimilar to their lauded hits in a parallel universe where punk never happened, so too can Elvis Costello be envisioned to have realised his sharp pop knack in one way or another. With the help of his backing band, The Attractions, Costello scored a run of successful singles across the late 1970s that masked a lyricist with a deep admiration for the songwriters of old under its spiky, new wave facade.
Costello came from respectable musical stock, exposed to his mother’s voluminous record collection and his father being the bebop trumpeter Ross MacManus, playing in numerous jazz groups of the day and even featured in Joe Loss Orchestra’s big band.
A healthy reverence for music’s yesteryear was where Costello’s heart lay, later collaborating with Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney and exploring all of the 20th-century musical art forms across R&B, country, hip hop, and even collaborations with the classical ensemble the Brodsky Quartet.
Back in 2013, Vanity Fair set Costello to the task of compiling his “500 albums essential to a happy life”, presenting a peek into his exhaustive record collection and the albums that have scored his life’s peaks and troughs: “There are probably songs being composed right now that will eclipse every entry on this list in somebody’s heart or mind. It is my experience that music is more like water than a rhinoceros. It doesn’t charge madly down one path. It runs away in every direction.”
Punk, of course, gets a look in. Among many American picks, Costello is curiously select with his British examples, considering the generous amount of LPs at play. Punk adjacent groups such as Ian Dury and The Blockheads, The Jam, and The Pogues are highlighted – the latter’s Rum Sodomy & the Lash he produced – and two entries by The Pretenders are included, charitably including their singles collection along with their eponymous debut.
When it comes to UK punk’s core canon, the omissions are stark. Only an album each from The Clash, Sex Pistols, and The Undertones makes it to the 500 treasure chest. While the Pistols’ sole LP is almost an obligation, his selects of London’s Calling and The Undertones reveal where Costello’s tastes really lie with two albums that harnessed songcraft knack under its snarling front, which is proudly an exercise Costello knows all too well and owes his career to.
The choices
No Damned? What about The Stranglers? And surely The Adverts’ lyrical arrest was able to stick a hook in Costello? There’s something of an orthodoxy to Costello’s UK punk picks, which feels less surprising the more his ultimate heroes are considered, serving as a nod to the era that afforded his entrance to the charts rather than being wedded to a movement that truly stirs his soul.
Still, they’re solid selections. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols stands as the ever dependable gateway to UK punk, likely to endure for decades to come as the punk archetype future generations will think of when considering rock’s great 1970s upend, The Undertones displayed just how sharp pocraft could be underneath the garage urgency, and London’s Calling pointed toward a creative ambition unreined by the expectations that began to creep in by the decade’s end.
Elvis Costello’s favourite British punk albums
- The Undertones – The Undertones
- Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols – Sex Pistols
- London Calling – The Clash
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