5 Critically Adored Elvis Costello Songs That Never Reached No. 1

Elvis Costello has written and recorded a treasure trove of tunes that garnered high critical acclaim, but none of them have ever made No. 1 in either the U.S. or the U.K. In fact, in a career of hits including the slinky "Watching the Detectives" and the heartfelt "Veronica," Costello has only gotten three of his songs into the Billboard Hot 100 — and they might not be the ones you'd expect.

How can this be? This is an artist who fired the imagination of the punk and new wave kids, then went on to master every musical genre he turned his hand to, including classic country, orchestral pop, and glossy R&B. His critically praised songs, with their conflicted storytelling, instantly memorable melodies, and intricate wordplay, have become the soundtrack to many listeners' lives.

Costello's story contains many chapters, but it deserves one more: a look at his iconic pop masterpieces that have drawn critical adoration but not the highest commercial reward. These five Costello tunes remain etched in fans' memories but never burned up the charts. You may have even sworn they were runaway hits, but they weren't.

Deceptively sentimental-sounding, Elvis Costello's "Alison" presents a mix of yearning, betrayal, and regret, held together with a lilting melody, sophisticated storytelling, vulnerable vocals, and John McFee's gently spiraling, jazz-inflected guitar. Despite those plusses, Costello's "Alison" wasn't a hit. The highest the song ascended was Linda Ronstadt's 1979 cover version, which reached No. 30 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart.

Since its 1977 release, "Alison" has been lauded, and its composer has been compared to musical greats. Rolling Stone ranks it among the 500 best songs of all time. Trouser Press calls the tune "a searing romantic ballad," and the book "Elvis Is King: Costello's My Aim Is True" praises the song's oblique narrative, stating that Costello "cunningly weaves a story that stays tantalizingly out of reach."

Costello rejects interpretations that "Alison" depicts violent revenge fantasies about an ex, offering in his 2016 memoir, "Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink," that it's a fictional story about a store clerk he observed. He has also implied that "Alison" is autobiographical. "I was a young fellow then and I think I had a doubt ... about whether my heart was as true as I hoped," Costello told the BBC in 2015. Perhaps explanations for the song's commercial failure are as unattainable as its meaning.

The unlikely combination of The Clash and film noir inspired Elvis Costello's "Watching the Detectives." Costello played The Clash's 1977 self-titled debut LP repeatedly, and he subsequently combined the punk icons' use of reggae rhythms — most likely on its cover of Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" — with black-and-white crime movies. The result is a slippery rock steady tune, possibly about an (imaginary?) girlfriend who wants to watch TV crime shows all the time. ("I don't know how much more of this I can take / She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake.") Arguably Costello's first foray into new wave, "Watching the Detectives" is propelled by Steve Nieve's eerie, fluting keyboards that stalk the band's twangy spaghetti-western guitars and Costello's caustic drawl. 

Reviewers raved about the song. uDiscover Music calls it Costello's "breakthrough single," and Cashbox claimed the tune tackled "how media violence deadens our emotions." "The song merges punk aggression with noir menace," said Rolling Stone. The tune catapulted to No. 15 in Britain, but in the U.S., it missed cracking Billboard's Hot 100, stalling at No. 108.

When he performed "Radio, Radio" on "Saturday Night Live" in 1977 without prior approval from the show's producers, Elvis Costello reportedly got himself banned from "SNL" for more than a decade. "Radio, Radio" locks in Costello's take on the nascent new wave genre, with The Attractions' Steve Nieve's surging keyboards and Costello's acerbic wordplay trained on media's manipulation of the masses: "They say you better listen to the voice of reason / But they don't give you any choice / 'Cause they think that it's treason."

Dubbing "Radio, Radio" Costello's "unofficial theme song," Trouser Press calls it a "daring and snotty attack on the powers that rule the airwaves." Paste rates the tune as Costello's best, a "dissertation on corporate radio [that] still seethes ... to this day," while The Guardian rates the "muscular anthem" the artist's second best. The propulsive 1978 British single went to No. 29 in the U.K., but the song came nowhere near Billboard's charts.

Over a swaying R&B beat, glossy keyboards, and crisp guitar accents, Elvis Costello soulfully croons lyrics that delineate perhaps his most straightforward — and extended — metaphor: "When your dreamboat turns out to be a footnote / I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions." In "Everyday I Write the Book," the tune's protagonist documents a troubled romance, intending to turn the story into a book.

The song's uncharacteristically direct lyrical approach was by design. When Costello started recording the tune's parent record, "Punch the Clock," in 1983, he hadn't cracked the British top 10 since 1981. Collaborating with hit-making producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, Costello deliberately set out to deliver an uncomplicated pop hit with a polished sound. "It was a song I wrote in 10 minutes almost as a challenge to myself," Costello told journalist Simon Grigg in a 1998 interview. "I thought, maybe I could write just a simple, almost formula song and make it mean something."

The result was Costello's first appearance in the American charts, at No. 36. (It also made it to No. 28 in Britain.) Though Costello later professed that the song was passionless, reviews were positive. "Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello" claims the song approaches the melodic and lyrical facility of Smokey Robinson. Cashbox said the song lives up to Costello's reputation as "a pop tunesmith nonpareil," and Trouser Press called it "a winning tune worthy of being sung by Aretha Franklin."

With ringing, jangly guitars and a galloping melody, "Veronica" charges out of the gate with irresistible momentum. The upbeat tune, one of 12 songs resulting from Elvis Costello's collaboration with Paul McCartney, conveys a serious subject close to Costello's heart. "I'd brought an early draft of 'Veronica' that you would have recognized," Costello writes in his autobiography "Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink." "All of the words that I'd already written were about my paternal grandmother, Molly ... Her Catholic confirmation name, Veronica, provided the very title of the song."

The titular protagonist is in a nursing home, living with the effects of Alzheimer's, but she's also time traveling in her mind between moments of sorrow and joy. The tune, which eschews melancholy for brisk, bright pop, also benefits from McCartney's melodic bass.

With "Veronica," Costello finally cracked America's top 20, landing at Billboard's No. 19, his highest position to date. (The song peaked at No. 31 in Britain.) Entertainment Weekly chose "Veronica" as one of Costello's 10 best tunes. The song's video, where Costello talks about his grandmother's brief flickers of lucidity, earned the artist a 1989 MTV Video Award. "I'm not making any big point," Costello told the BBC. "It's just a little bit of hope, and ... a love song from me."