Shipbuilding

Clive Langer wrote the music for Wyatt but was unhappy with the lyrics he and friends came up with. He played the tune to Elvis Costello at a party hosted by Nick Lowe, and within days Costello had words, which he called the best lyrics he had written. Written during the Falklands War of 1982, they note the irony of the war bringing prosperity back to shipyards on the Clyde, Merseyside, the north east and Belfast, building ships to replace those sunk while sending the area's sons to fight in them.

Geoff Travis of Rough Trade sent Wyatt a cassette. Costello had already sung it, and Wyatt recalled doing his vocal in a couple of hours with Costello producing. The musicians were Mark Bedford on double bass, Martin Hughes on drums, Langer on organ, Steve Nieve on piano and Costello on backing vocals, none of them credited on the record. It came out on Rough Trade on 20 August 1982 and did not chart. Re-released on 22 April 1983, it reached number 35 in the UK, the label's first Top 40 entry, and NME writers voted it their third favorite song of 1982. The single came in five sleeves using sections of Stanley Spencer's Shipbuilding on the Clyde panels.

Trouser Press called it as subtle and insightful an anti-war song as anyone's ever written. Costello made his own version for Punch the Clock in 1983, with Chet Baker on trumpet, and Tasmin Archer had a UK Top 40 hit with it in 1994.