Album: Imperial Bedroom
Year: 1982
Welcome to my favorite Elvis Costello song.
From the crazy, tacked-on screamo intro & outro to the ridiculously gorgeous folk-rock middle, “Man Out Of Time” is an absolute master class in making a haunting, lyrical, utterly major song.
And not surprisingly, it’s Elvis Costello & The Attractions aiming for that Blonde on Blonde thin wild mercury sound, and totally nailing it. “Man Out Of Time” could go toe-to-toe with “Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues” or “(One of Us Know) Sooner Or Later” and land a fair amount of punches.
And so “Man Out Of Time” is dominated by a bed of acoustic guitars and organ, with Steve Nieve’s piano playing hide-and-seek with the rest of the instruments. It’s dancing on top of the lyrics here, and weaving under the acoustic guitar there, and during the anthemic chorus it goes away entirely.
To murder my love is a crime
But willllllllllll
Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Stillllllllllll love
A man out of time
With the song building in and out of the chorus and Elvis stretching out the words in order to emphasize the internal rhymes and add to the overall grandeur, the chorus of “Man Out of Time” is the actual sound of that man running out of time, with all of his choices taken away, wondering what he’s going to do next. No wonder starts off (and ends up) screaming.
One more thing. Here’s why you should never read books by musicians explaining their music. According to Elvis Costello’s Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, the first line of the chorus is:
To murder, my love, is a crime
and not
To murder my love is a crime
And I honestly hope that was just a typo because that line is so much stronger — the specificity of murdering Elvis’ love as opposed to just murder in general — without the commas.
“Man Out of Time”
“Man Out of Time” performed live on “Late Night With David Letterman,” 1982