59: This Year's Model (with Jared Bailey) (Patreon)

Jared Bailey joins me from Columbia, South Carolina to discuss Elvis Costello’s monumental 1978 pop/punk album This Year’s Model, his first with his band The Attractions. Costello and his Argentine producer Sebastian Krys recently deconstructed and reimagined this landmark record for the new Spanish Model project where the album’s lyrics are reinterpreted by singers from across the Spanish-speaking world, using the original backing tracks.

We also discuss Elvis Costello as the prototypical dirtbag leftist, and his career-long musical relationship to the nation of Argentina, from his protest song "Shipbuilding" inspired by the war in the Falkland Islands, his undisguised contempt for the warmongering Margaret Thatcher, and his affinity with the Argentine people that must have informed the Spanish Model project, which makes this timeless work accessible to an entirely new audience of listeners.

Follow Jared Bailey on Twitter.

"The Beat", Elvis Costello and The Attractions, live at Rockpalast, West Germany 1978

Music video for "Shipbuilding" (Robert Wyatt, 1983)

Diego Maradona’s “Goal of the Century” against England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-finals, with Argentine sportscaster Victor Hugo Morales losing his mind (with English subtitles)

Music video for "La Chica De Hoy" (Elvis Costello and The Attractions and Cami, from Spanish Model, 2021