Elvis and Paul

I remember reading about the collaboration between Elvis and Paul: Costello and McCartney. There was some speculation that there'd be an album....which never came to pass. Too bad, I thought. Paul hadn't made a compelling album in years and I'd long since lost track what Elvis had been putting out.

In all, they wrote 14 songs together - "Back on My Feet", "Veronica", "Pads, Paws and Claws", "My Brave Face", "Don't Be Careless Love", "That Day is Done", "You Want Her Too", "So Like Candy", "Playboy to a Man", "The Lovers That Never Were", "Mistress and Maid", "Shallow Grave", "Tommy's Comming Home", and "Twenty Nine Fingers" - releasing the first 12 officially between 1987 and 1996, with the last two released in original demo form on a McCartney archival release in 2017. In addition, Paul plays bass on "...This Town", from Spike.

When I first put this playlist together, I used the official releases, sans "Back on My Feet" which is unavailable on Spotify. That is unfortunate, but you can check it out here. The mix didn't sound like an album. Paul's songs sounded syrupy and were tricked out with 1980's production values, while the Elvis tunes sounded....like Elvis. Of Paul's recordings, "Back on My Feet" would've been the best of the batch.

With the deluxe edition of Flowers in the Dirt, we got a release of not only the Elvis and Paul demos (mostly just the two singing, backed by guitar or piano) but also several studio demos from Paul. I found that most of Paul's studio demo recordings fit better on a playlist with Elvis's tracks than did the original releases. A couple of the tracks here are from the original Paul and Elvis demos. For the sake of comparison, I bookended the list with "Playboy to a Man", the first being Paul's demo, the last being Costello's original release. Listening to it, it could have been a good album. I wish they had toured it.

If you are interested in hearing the Demos, here they are. There are also demo versions of Elvis doing "Veronica", "Pads, Paws and Claws" and "Mistress and Maid", out there. I invite you to check them out.
Lastly, if you are interested in the originally released versions of the collaboration, here they are.
Whew...glad that's settled...now we can all rest easy.

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