Customer Reviews

Elvis Costello -- A Singing Dictionary

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I have used this songbook so much it's falling apart. All the early songs that E.C. wrote are included. (not the covers like My Funny Valentine) Songs are from the albums My Aim is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy!! and the Taking Liberties collection of b-sides and imports. A few lyrics may be a little off. There were never lyric sheets with those albums, so I may just have put in my own intrepretations. These early songs are great for budding guitarists and song writers. They are easily played on solo acoustic and you can learn about what makes a great song. Of course, you must first own the recordings!

It helped me learn to play guitar. Elvis Costello's early compositions are all here. The songs are reasonably simple to learn and sing along to. The melodies are fantastic because it's Elvis Costello, and if you haven't listened to the songs that closely, you will be amazed at how clever his wordplay is.

For rock music fans this is a piece of history. The words and music to Elvis Costello's early canon of work, and as a contribution to the genre it doesn't get much better. Call yourself a music aficionado? Not until you've got this in your collection!

An excellent collection - an indispensable resource for the Elvis Costello fan who wants to play all these songs on guitar (or piano).


Covers the first five albums - My Aim Is True, This Years Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy, Taking Liberties.

As others have posted, these are some of the best albums ever made. However, the arrangements in this book are somewhat hit-and -miss. The arrangements for many songs that are heavily dependent on the bassline ("Pump it Up," "Beaten to the Punch", "Lipstick Vogue") are missing anything remotely resembling the original bassline. You will have to spend a lot of work listening the recordings and working these out for yourself. (For some reason, there is a dearth of bass tabs available online for Elvis's work. Why? I did find a bass tab for "Pump it Up" though, the addition of which to the _Singing Dictionary_ arrangement made it very usable.)

In fact, there are lots of errors in this book down to inexplicable decisions by its editor(s). For instance, the arrangement of "Man Called Uncle," while not true to the recorded bassline, still is very good overall. However, the introduction of the song is incorrect, and an important (but fortunately easy to figure out) melody line is missing during the break.

I still recommend this book, but be warned the bass in many/most of these arrangements is seriously lacking.