This Year's Model

The band recorded it during a break in touring, after a three-night residency at the Nashville Rooms that ended on Christmas Eve 1977. Most songs were already part of the live set, so there were few overdubs. Roger Bechirian engineered and mixed. Costello later said the sessions took about eleven days and described Bechirian as a calm, practical foil to Lowe's instinctive and emotional approach. Barbara Schultz reported in Mix that the basic tracks went live to a 16-track Ampex machine, with the players arranged in a semicircle around Pete Thomas's drum kit.

The US edition dropped Chelsea and Night Rally and added Radio Radio. Mick Jones of the Clash plays lead guitar on the bonus track Big Tears. The album reached number 4 in the UK and 30 in the US, and went gold in Britain, America and Canada. Melody Maker and The Village Voice both voted it the best album of 1978. Allan Jones of Melody Maker wrote that it exhausted superlatives, while Jon Pareles of Crawdaddy objected to its misogyny. Robert Christgau gave it an A.