Hey everybody, this is Kyle from Track by
Track with new music news on today’s Fast
Track. The road to Elvis Costello’s new
album has been full of interesting twists
and turns, and now also a very curious detour.
After releasing three advance singles for
the upcoming “Hey Clockface,” Elvis has
now dropped a fourth track, this time a non-album
B-side. “Phonographic Memory” is a spoken
word piece, featuring a brief introduction
from Orson Welles. It’s a sort of dystopian
short story that imagines a post-war world
where most of the books have been burned,
the internet has been turned off and the president
appears to be Taylor Swift. Costello doesn’t
explicitly say quote Taylor, but the identity
is too strongly implied to be anyone else.
In the closing lyric he says quote President
Swift gave a slight, shy smile of pearl and
pillar-box red and began to sing a plain song
of her acceptance. So we know this President
Swift is a she and also singer. And in his
description of the song, he points her out
again, saying it involves quote someone only
identified as President Swift unquote. Clearly,
he’s being a provocateur here. In any case,
it’s a very unique track in Costello’s
historically unique discography. His reading
of the story is laid over a bed of solo acoustic
guitar, mixed with reverb and backwards effects.
As I said, it’s a b-side, so it does not
appear on the tracklist for actual new album.
Costello also teases the next installment
of the story is coming on September 11th.
Will we get more of President Taylor Swift?
Stay tuned to find out! This has been a Fast
Track on Track by Track. Thanks for watching!
