Not One Is The Equal Of You

It’s hard for anything to really stay “lost” or “underrated” anymore. 

The blessing and the curse of the internet is that no matter how obscure or how limited, everything ever created will be unearthed, uploaded, and unquestionably appreciated by someone, somewhere, sometime. 

So yeah, in the grand scheme of things, Elvis Costello’s “You Stole My Bell” is not a “lost classic” because you can go find it in ten places right now. I bought it on iTunes. It’s on YouTube. It’s absolutely been found. 

It is a little off the beaten path in that it’s only officially appeared in a handful of places–on the soundtrack to the film The Family Man in 2000 (?!) and then on EC’s 2012 collection In Motion Pictures that compiles a bunch of his soundtrack cuts in one place. It’s hard to tell but the recording also seems like a possible one-off; Costello plays all the instruments and is aided by a production team that would share the booth with the Imposter (EC himself) on 2002’s When I Was Cruel—engineer Ciaran Cahill, “sound and rhythm processor” Leo Pearson, and assistant engineer Kieran Lynch. 

In the context of EC’s career, this song forms a bit of a missing link between the classic pop approach of his 1998 album with Burt Bacharach, Painted from Memory, and When I Was Cruel. Co-written with then-wife Cait O’Riordan, “You Stole My Bell” is a clever pass at a mid-tempo heartbreak ballad, with some unexpected chord jumps and a lingering sense of loss. The singer knows he’s let go of something good in his life; he’s been out in the “cold and loveless world,” and “not one is the equal” of the woman he sings to. 

The sound is organically electric, blending drum machines and synth effects with piano, guitar, and bass. You can hear EC’s gradual movement to the more prickly, aggressive sound he’ll adopt for When I Was Cruel, as well as a lingering reluctance to move too far away from the classicism of a Burt Bacharach production.

More than anything else, “You Stole My Bell” is just a sterling example of a goddamned sturdy pop song, built by two expert artisans using their most successful tools. What it lacks in complexity or ironic detachment, it more than makes up for in emotional warmth and connection. There’s no evasion here, no ducking behind the convenient cover of a clever pun or a devastating put down. It’s about as straightforward as Elvis Costello gets. 

Which sounds like a copout— “um, this song is just, um, good”—except that Costello is such an amazing artist that he’s able to turn out work this pitch perfect as an afterthought. His one-off soundtrack cuts for moderately successful romantic comedies are better than many artists’ most labored-over creations. It’s why I will never get sick of listening to EC; even when he’s just laying down a triviality to cash a Hollywood paycheck, there’s always something to be found inside.