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  1. No argument – he picked exactly the same 500 albums as I would.
    Slightly more seriously – I thought it was a pretty good list. If you could “instantly” have a 500 piece album collection and that was all you could play for the rest of your life – you could do a lot worse.

  2. Notable that he makes an effort to demonstrate a dilletante’s interest in assorted genres outside his principal passions, but none at all in electronic music. (I wonder what he gets out of Low that no other synth record provides..)

  3. Terrific list – that’s my day sorted. If you can ignore all the typos, that is – my favourite is the Louvin Spoonful. Not afraid of Greatest Hits, I notice, unlike the commenters, who are taking the hard line…

    I’d forgotten about Dirk Bogarde’s oh-so-seductive reciting the standards album.

  7. No Highway 61 but includes Shot Of Love – I love SOL but big call.
    3 Tbone Burnette albums WTF?

    Re “best ofs” for some artists it is the best thing to have. So it probably should be the best records to have, not the best albums. For quite a few like Chuck Berry , in their best period, albums were often an aggregation of singles anyway.

    • The Burnett albums are a bit ‘friendsy’. Talking Animals is a long way from a great record. The Shot of Love selection is deliberately perverse unless he thinks that Every Grain of Sand makes it indispensable ( I have never much liked that kind of Dylan – I don’t believe him on that song at all – ‘in the hour of my deepest need”? )

    • The annual “Music Issues” of Vanity Fair were quite good. Apart from the brilliant pictures they had book-length articles, a fantastically sarcastic multi-part “Music Hipster’s Encyclopedia”, and of course those lists! Elvis did another one, “Music Round The Clock: Songs from Morning To Night”, and the most wonderful was “David Bowie’s Hidden Treasures From His LP Collection”, with pictures supplied by Bowie himself, showing his LPs from China and Russia, with carefully sellotaped sleeves.

  11. Controversial as ever I see Elvis has picked Reckoning over Murmur and Between The Buttons but not Exile or Sticky Fingers.

    I can handle including a Best Of – but picking a career-spanning boxset is a bit of a stretch….

    • What’s “controversial” about his picks?
      It’s a list of “HIS” favourite albums. Not a listening directive from the government.
      If he thinks “Sounds Of North American Frogs” is better than “Pet Sounds”, that would still be OK. (BTW, that frogs album is indeed quite good…)

      • Not being entirely serious about this to be honest, as you’ve said it’s his choice not mine.

        Could have said the same thing about him picking Carl and The Passions rather than Surf’s Up or Tilt instead of any of Scott 1 to 4

        • I’m going nowhere near anything Costello reckons, don’t do dodgers, but if this dodge reckons Between the Buttons over the after-the-Lord-Mayor’s-Show stuff… well done to the R. White’s Lemonade backing vocalist, I say.

        • I can understand somebody choosing Tilt but not Scott to Scott 4 (or vice versa) because it’s essentially a completely different artist. Even his voice is different (unlike on Climate of Hunter)

  12. I remember the list at the time and being mightily impressed. Say what you will about Costello but I don’t think there is anyone around with a more encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music.
    I would love to compile my own list of top 500 but if I am honest would take a long time and would be subject to numerous alterations.

    • @Steve T

      Elton John would surely give him a good run for his money.

      And indeed did when he served as the main mover behind the splendid chat/music show that was EC”s Spectacle.

      Featuring interviews with the likes of John Prime, Ron Sexsmith and many, many more top notch singer songwriters, it’s; Well worth hunting down if you’ve not wathched it

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacle:_Elvis_Costello_with…

      Don\t thank me, there’s no need. But if you really must, I’ll pass you over a list of potential presents by return

  16. Costello’s 3 selections for Duke Ellington are as follows:

    • Duke Ellington
    o Anatomy Of A Murder – 1959
    o ….And His Mother Called Him Bill – 1968
    o The Centennial Edition: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings – 1999

    But “…And his mother called him Bill” is contained within the big 24 CD Centennial box that he mentions straight afterward anyway. Perhaps Elvis wanted to highlight “…And his mother called him Bill” (the Duke’s tribute to his late musical collaborator, Billy Strayhorn) because it’s such a brilliant album?
    Anyway, if we do remove “…And his mother called him Bill” from the list, then there’s room for yet another late period Duke masterpiece, namely “New Orleans Suite”.

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