or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

Goodbye Cruel World is widely considered Elvis Costello’s worst album. While it is certainly a tepid affair, he would go on to do worse. While writing and recording the album, he was going through a bitter divorce and was fed up with making music altogether. Yet, he owed an album to Columbia even though he was creatively drained. Tony Clayton-Lea, a Costello biographer, notes that “there isn’t a song that isn’t undermined by a sense of unhappiness” that is never redeemed by a “burst of instrumental encouragement or lyrical deftness”. Costello himself was dissatisfied with the album during its recording but was under contractual obligation to release it.

After their relative success with Punch The Clock, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley were called back to produce Goodbye Cruel World. Critics and fans are wont to blame them for the album’s failure but there was really nothing they could do. Costello was almost destroying his career and not in the romantic Alex Chilton-Third sense, but in the real, miserable, unglamorous way.

“The Only Flame in Town”, one of the album’s three singles, with a guest spot by Daryl Hall (!) sets the tone for things to come-bland, uninspired pop-soul. The song, much like all the others, meanders and ends up nowhere. Before, even the worst Costello song had a decent hook, but “The Only Flame in Town” is entirely unmemorable. “Room With No Number” could have been one of the album’s few interesting songs as it was the first in which Costello directly dealt with his infidelity. But Costello goofs it up. Instead of offering personal insight, he provides another hotel-room sob story cliché. “Love Field” is a lyrical low-point for Elvis as he pines for his true love while “in a love field” with some floozy.

What’s most maddening about the album is not the unsalvageable lows but the few songs where Costello almost gets it right. . “The Comedians” as performed by Roy Orbison is emotionally wrenching and powerful but Costello botches the arrangement of his own song to add another boring entry to the record.

Quite frankly, Goodbye Cruel World never should have been released (it appears that Rhino is of the same mind-they do not plan on giving it the deluxe 2xCd treatment that they are giving most of his other albums.). Costello is far from inspired and the few good songs he penned for the sessions are destroyed by poor arrangements and detached-sounding vocal performances. Goodbye Cruel World is not an awful record, but it is the epitome of mediocre. I cannot see why anybody would want to listen to it more than once.