How Elvis Costello Turned a Bruce Springsteen Homage Into His Most Searing Protest Song

Songwriters will often tell you that a song is never finished. Even after these tunesmiths have recorded their songs, they’ll still go back to tinker with them now and again. In some cases, this endless editing produces something revelatory.

Elvis Costello can certainly attest to that notion. His decision to rework a somewhat hopeful song into a bitter one paid off with “Radio Radio”, the 1978 howitzer of a track that became one of his signatures.

“Radio” Daze

Without Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello might never have made it around to recording “Radio Radio”. Costello was an early fan of Springsteen’s before most of the rest of the listening public caught wind of him. E.C. was echoing the romantic dreamer in The Boss when he wrote the song “Radio Soul”.

Costello played “Radio Soul” for a while with his band Flip City. Since that group never quite made it to the recording studio, the story of the song might have ended there. But a few years later, furious over the BBC banning Sex Pistols’ track “God Save The Queen”, Costello went back to the song.

While he kept some of the original lyrics, he toughened the rest up, as befitting a protest song. He also revved up the intensity of the music, a task in which he was aided by The Attractions, the backing band Costello had only recently hired.

In December 1977, months before the studio version of the song was released, Costello sprung it unsuspectingly on the audience of Saturday Night Live. The impromptu decision earned him a long ban from the SNL stage. And it also strengthened the credibility of “Radio Radio” as an antagonistic force against all things corporate and homogenized.

A Deep Dive into the Lyrics of “Radio Radio”

You can hear the more benign elements of the original version of the song in the first verse of “Radio Radio”. Costello’s narrator comes on like a true believer. “I was tuning in the shine on the light night dial,” he explains. “Doing anything my radio advised/With every one of those late night stations/Playing songs, bringing tears to my eyes.”

But then things take a turn: “They’re saying things that I can hardly believe/They really think we’re getting out of control.” When Costello claims that “Radio is cleaning up the nation,” it sounds more like a threat than a comfort.

In the middle eight, Costello’s true motivation comes to the fore. “I wanna bite the hand that feeds me,” he sneers. “I wanna bite that hand so badly/I want to make them wish they’d never seen me.” He pulls out “anaesthetize”, a mouthful of a word, as a way of describing the effect that modern radio wishes to have on its listeners.

Elvis Costello suggests that those who buck the corporate trend will be punished. “They say you better listen to the voice of reason,” he says. “But they don’t give you any choice ‘cause they think that it’s treason.”

His sendoff is a challenge to those hearing the song. “So you had better do as you are told,” he sings. “You better listen to the radio.” The audible bile is voice makes it clear that he thinks the smart move is to do just the opposite. “Radio Radio” might have started out as a tribute to the best parts of the medium. It ended as a song wishing that the whole apparatus would crumble to the ground.

(Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)