Everyday I Write The Book Watching The Detectives Pump It Up Elvis Costello And The Attractions

Everyday I write the Book Album: Punch The Clock (1983)
Watching the Detectives Album: The Very Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions (1977)
Pump It Up Album: This Year's Model (1978)
by Elvis Costello And The Attractions

Esquire magazine once called Everyday I write the Book "the most intellectually satisfying pop song ever written." Costello didn't put much thought into it though. "I wrote it just for a joke," he told Performing Songwriter in 2004. "But that's often the way to write a hit record (laughs). We had a group on the road with us that was trying to write these very self-conscious pop jangly kind of songs and that was their trip. So I thought I'd tease them by writing something that was like what they did, only sort of better than them. I wrote it in ten minutes."

When Costello wrote this song, he envisioned it with a retro Merseybeat popularized by Liverpool groups of the '60s (think Gerry and the Pacemakers and very early Beatles recordings). His producer, Clive Langer, heard hit potential in the song and convinced Costello to do a more contemporary arrangement, which they modeled on Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing." The result was a modern R&B sound that served the song well.

Remarkably, Everyday I write the Book was Costello's first American hit. He was a regular on the UK charts since his first release in 1977, but American singles were never his priority (he famously sabotaged his 1977 Saturday Night Live performance by performing the subversive "Radio Radio" instead of the presumptive hit "Less Than Zero"). Despite an outpouring of support in America from independent record stores, college radio and music journalists, his only chart showings to this point were two singles that bubbled under on the Hot 100: "Watching The Detectives" (#108) and "Accidents Will Happen" (#101).

"Everyday I Write The Book" got a push from MTV, which gave the video some spins and helped introduce Costello to younger audience. Radio stations in the US remained lukewarm on Costello, as he didn't fit in on the Contemporary Hits or Rock playlists. Not that he was concerned; Costello's indifference to popular taste earned him even more respect from his American fans. It wasn't until 1989 that he managed another Top 40 hit, "Veronica," which was once again driven by MTV.
The video was directed by Don Letts, who did a lot of work with The Clash and The Pretenders. In the clip, Elvis and his band (The Attractions) play in a studio stetting, wearing muted colors in stark contrast to the two backup singers, Caron Wheeler and Claudia Fontaine, who sport colorful dresses and head wraps. Old movie clips and random images like a man typing with boxing gloves are intercut throughout. These rather random videos did very well on early MTV, as they gave viewers a good look at the artist and provided some memorable visuals.

This was used in the films The Wedding Singer (1998) and Brooklyn Rules (2007). It is also heard in the 2001 Gilmore Girls episode, "The Breakup: Part 2."

Elvis Costello told Uncut that he's wanted "to write songs as good as Nick Lowe," since he was 17. He added: "'Everyday I Write the Book' is a knockoff of Nick's 'When I Write the Book' with a little Rodgers and Hart thrown in.'"

Watching the Detectives is an example of the "noir thing" Costello says runs through much of his material. Inspired by American detective shows, the lyric is filled with images of detective, dames, guns and cigarettes - all the film noir tropes. The story is rather opaque, but the wordplay is quite compelling.

Elvis Costello wrote "Watching the Detectives" after an all-night bout of listening to The Clash's debut album, The Clash, on headphones, which explains the reggae influence. Fortified by drinking an entire jar of instant coffee, he stayed awake for 36 hours. Costello told Q magazine August 2013: "Why do you think that song is so jerky? I drank a lot of coffee."
Costello justifies his later performance of this song as a big-band number, saying that it should be realized as an orchestral piece using the film music feeling and the swing rhythms of 1950s detective shows.

Watching the Detectives had different B-sides on the single release; in the UK, two live tracks of "Blame it on Cain" and "Mystery Dance," and in the US, the song "Alison," the lead track from Costello's second single.

Covers of Watching the Detectives include Duran Duran in 1995 on their Thank You album, Jenna Mammina in 1999 on her Under the Influence album, and Toto in 2002 on their Through the Looking Glass album.

Even though "Watching the Detectives" is credited to "Elvis Costello & the Attractions," this song's lead track was actually recorded in May of 1977, before the Attractions formed. The backing was Steve Goulding on drums and Andrew Bodnar on bass guitar, both from Graham Parker's band, The Rumour.

The keyboard overdubs were added later by regular Elvis Costello collaborator Steve Nieve. The singer had in mind a piano sound that utilised the sort of short repeating patterns that movie composer Bernard Hermann was renowned for. Costello recalled to Billboard:

"When we did 'Watching the Detectives,' it was the first record that Steve Nieve played on. He was 19, straight out of the Royal College, and we'd only just met. I said, 'This is about detectives, I want a piano thing that sounds like Bernard Hermann,' and, of course, he didn't know what I'm talking about, so I go [makes staccato, sharp sound], and what you hear on the record is this galloping piano thing that rushes the beat and it sounds like one of those sudden jarring gestures that Hermann would use a lot. But we didn't have 19 clarinets or whatever he used [in] Torn Curtain; we just had a battered upright in an eight-track studio. What you imagine you have to render whether you use a fuzz-tone guitar or a symphony orchestra and everything in between."

This inspired the UK ska band Madness' 1979 hit "My Girl."

Elvis Costello wrote Pump It Up on the fire escape at a Newcastle hotel during Stiff Records' 1977 tour. At the time he was upset that his road-mates were taking the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll philosophy rather too literally.
The guitar riff was sampled in Rogue Traders' 2005 UK #3 single "Voodoo Child."
Madonna learned to play the drums by playing along to this song.

In 2021, the pop star Olivia Rodrigo released a song called "Brutal" with a very similar guitar riff as Pump It Up. When social media users brought this up, Costello chimed in with his thoughts, posting, ""This is fine by me. It's how rock & roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That's what I did."

Costello, showing impressive mastery of hashtags for a man in his 60s, added #SubterraneanHomesickblues and #TooMuchMonkeyBusiness, references to two songs that influenced him: Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business."