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(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea

A tense single written while Costello still worked as a computer programmer, and absent from the US album.
Elvis Costello, from This Year's Model (1978)

Written by
Elvis Costello
Released
3 March 1978
Length
3:06
Album
This Year's Model

Costello wrote it while working as a computer programmer. Lowe produced the single, released on 3 March 1978 with You Belong to Me on the B-side. Bruce Thomas said it was recorded in one afternoon along with Pump It Up. Costello explained that it drew on films of late-1960s London and on childhood trips to Chelsea with his father. After those, he said, Chelsea seemed even more of an unattainable neighborhood.

It reached number 16 in the UK, spending ten weeks on the chart, and number 12 in Ireland. Paul Flattery directed the video, which used the same white set as the one for Pump It Up. Bruce Thomas wears a bandage mitt in it after a hand injury. Costello played it at Woodstock '99, and live versions appear on Live at the El Mocambo.

More songs by Elvis Costello

Alison, Watching the Detectives, Pump It Up, Oliver's Army, Accidents Will Happen, Shipbuilding

Sources

  1. (I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea, Wikipedia
  2. This Year's Model, Wikipedia