"Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music"
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Costello’s “obviously” is doing a lot of work: it signals membership in a shared mythos (the Beatles as the sacred text), then immediately undercuts the nostalgia with a gentle correction. Yes, rock’n’roll is the root system. No, he didn’t arrive at the party when it was pure. He came in after the room had filled with smoke, arguments, and new furniture.
The line is a neat self-portrait of a musician who’s always been allergic to cosplay authenticity. Costello isn’t claiming origin; he’s claiming timing. By the moment he’s “making my own choices,” rock’n’roll has already slipped from a lean, subcultural engine into something we might call post-rock’n’roll: an era where the form is famous enough to be referenced, renovated, and commodified. That’s not a complaint so much as a statement of conditions. He’s describing a creative landscape where influence arrives pre-mediated, filtered through the Beatles’ curatorial taste and the industry they helped remake.
Subtextually, it’s also a defense of his own eclecticism. If the canonized heroes were “really into” early rock’n’roll, then building something new means accepting that your raw materials are secondhand: not the original shock of the genre, but its aftermath - pop sophistication, studio experimentation, punk’s backlash, new wave’s irony. Costello’s intent is to position himself as both devotee and revisionist: reverent toward the source, skeptical of purity, and fully aware that modern music is made in the wake of its own legends.
The line is a neat self-portrait of a musician who’s always been allergic to cosplay authenticity. Costello isn’t claiming origin; he’s claiming timing. By the moment he’s “making my own choices,” rock’n’roll has already slipped from a lean, subcultural engine into something we might call post-rock’n’roll: an era where the form is famous enough to be referenced, renovated, and commodified. That’s not a complaint so much as a statement of conditions. He’s describing a creative landscape where influence arrives pre-mediated, filtered through the Beatles’ curatorial taste and the industry they helped remake.
Subtextually, it’s also a defense of his own eclecticism. If the canonized heroes were “really into” early rock’n’roll, then building something new means accepting that your raw materials are secondhand: not the original shock of the genre, but its aftermath - pop sophistication, studio experimentation, punk’s backlash, new wave’s irony. Costello’s intent is to position himself as both devotee and revisionist: reverent toward the source, skeptical of purity, and fully aware that modern music is made in the wake of its own legends.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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