The Top 20 Elvis Costello Songs of All Time

13. “Brilliant Mistake”

Sometimes it takes an outsider to truly take the temperature of a particular place. In terms of songwriting, think of the way Robbie Robertston, a Canadian, created some of the most telling portraits of the American South with The Band. Throughout his career, Elvis Costello has also been extremely insightful and, at times, unmerciful in capturing the modern landscape of America.

Yet even when his version of our fair country is less than flattering, the fact that he pulls no punches with all of his other subject matter, including his own failings and faults, earns him the right to make his criticisms and not sound like some ungrateful crank. “Brilliant Mistake” is partly about the artificiality of certain U.S. citizens and promises, but as told through the perspective of a hapless newcomer on our shores whose issues go beyond his new location, it plays out like a sad comedy rather than a bitter diatribe.

The understated elegance of the music conjured for this song from 1986’s King Of America certainly helps to leaven any of the harsher observations made in the lyrics. The pristine rhythm section of Jerry Scheff and Mickey Curry have the bottom end all wrapped up, allowing for Costello’s acoustic guitars to sweep through the landscape. T-Bone Wolk’s accordion adds a little flavor, and the whole thing gets buffed to a fine sheen by producers T-Bone Burnett, Larry Hirsch, and Elvis.

Great songs tend to start out great, and “Brilliant Mistake” is no exception. The first two lines: “He thought he was the King of America/Where they pour Coca-Cola just like vintage wine.” With that perverse version of opulence ringing in his head, the narrator admits just how lost he is in his new environs: “Now I try hard not to become hysterical/But I’m not sure if I am laughing or crying.” In just four lines, Costello has established both the narrator’s incredulity at his surroundings and his deep malaise.

The encounter with an ambitious yet dimwitted girl in the second verse brings Costello’s devilish sense of humor to the fore. When he sings, “She said that she was working for the ABC news/It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use,” you get the feeling Elvis especially relished getting in a little zinger at the expense of the press.

Still, there is something deeper going on in the song that just clever one-liners. The narrator’s desire to “talk in the past and not the present tense” betrays a serious ambivalence toward the way his life has evolved, and, in the last refrain, he sings, “I was a fine idea at the time/Now I’m a brilliant mistake.” In that way, he equates himself with America, two entities that started off with good intentions and high hopes but have lost their way in spectacular fashion. “Brilliant Mistake” may indeed be an affectionate send-up of the land of the free, but it’s also a moving portrait of a man lost in translation.