Alison

Released as a single on 21 May 1977 on Stiff in Britain and Columbia in America, with Welcome to the Working Week on the B-side, it was recorded at Pathway Studios in London with Clover and produced by Lowe. The staccato phrasing of the chorus was inspired by the Spinners' Ghetto Child. The UK single and two US singles did not chart.

Costello has said the song is about disappointing somebody and denied that it is about murder. In his 2015 memoir he says it was inspired by a supermarket checkout girl. Rolling Stone ranked it number 318 on its 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs. Linda Ronstadt covered it on Living in the USA in 1978 and released it as a single in April 1979, when it reached number 30 on the US Adult Contemporary chart.

Live

Setlist.fm logs it 397 times, more than any other Costello song. He played it at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles on 4 June 1978.