Dignify or Elevate

That’s how Elvis Costello describes “This Sad Burlesque” in the extensive liner notes to his 1992 album The Juliet Letters. Written and recorded with the Brodsky Quartet, The Juliet Letters is a cohesive song suite with lyrics that imagine letters written by anonymous lovers to Juliet Capulet, the deceased (and fictional!) titular co-star of the Shakespeare play. 

Thirty years and a sizeable ocean separate me from whatever may have been happening in England in the spring of 1992, so it was off to Wikipedia for me. I have to imagine it was the general election of April 1992 that inspired the lyric, an unexpected victory for John Major’s conservative Tories. The campaign seems a quiet belweather for the worst to come in the decades to follow, with anti-immigrant sentiment playing a role in the outcome and a turgid subplot known as “the war of Jennifer’s ear.” 

Costello penned the words for “This Sad Burlesque” just three years after his dark diatribe against another Torry, Margaret Thatcher (“Tramp the Dirt Down”). On the whole, “Burlesque” represents a more resigned, exhausted tone toward the prospect of British politics. Although it seems safe to assume that Costello’s attitude toward the platform of Major in 1992 wasn’t too far removed from his feelings about Thatcher, this is not nearly as angry a polemic. 

Without any specific references to the contemporary climate, “This Sad Burlesque” functions as a statement on modern politics overall, and that title phrase–not only does it roll effortlessly off the tongue, but it also perfectly captures the mood of modern politics, where the pathetic and the ludicrous have only continued to intertwine and amplify in the three decades since the song’s release. 

In the first part of the song, the singer seems to believe there may be a chance for a reprieve from business as usual for the government, only to issue his disappointed “P.S.” as the song draws to a close. Even after admitting defeat, he finds room for a note of consolation: 

Again, hard to imagine any kind of “mercy” from the same singer who penned “Tramp the Dirt Down.” But of course, when you can no longer be disgusted, you must try to be amused.