Elvis Costello’s King Of America & Other Realms celebrates and explores the songwriter’s lifelong love, fascination, and influence of American music, spanning his many albums and inspired collaborations with some of the most celebrated musicians, songwriters and producers in this music, including his longtime creative partnership with T Bone Burnett.
Compiled by Elvis Costello, the six-disc Super Deluxe Edition box set, King Of America & Other Realms, out now via UMe, traces Costello’s musical travels from Hollywood, Calif. – where the King Of America album was recorded – to a brand-new take on that album’s opener, “Brilliant Mistake,” recorded in Cape Fear, N.C. in early 2024, via Costello's recording adventures in New Orleans, Oxford and Clarksdale, Miss., Nashville and Memphis, Tenn. This one-of-a-kind 97-track musical journey is guided by Costello in a newly self-penned 35-page essay beautifully illustrated with numerous rare and never-before-seen photos in a 57-page booklet. The discs are housed in a handsome 12” x 11.5” package. A startlingly beautiful cover shot by Terence Donovan reveals the majesty and absurdity of a king in his velvet and bejeweled crown and embroidered denim jacket.
King Of America & Other Realms is anchored by a new 2024 remaster from the original master tapes of Costello’s 1986 career-defining, T Bone Burnett-produced album, King Of America, and features solo demos from 1985, including never previously released demos cut at Red Bus Recording Studios in London in the months prior to the King Of America sessions in Hollywood and mixed from newly discovered multitrack tapes; a 17-song Royal Albert Hall concert from 1987 in London, mixed from multitrack tapes; and a three-disc compendium of recordings and collaborations from across the last four decades, including previously unreleased demos, outtakes and live recordings. The collection was produced by Elvis Costello and Steve Berkowitz.
For fans wanting to explore some of the many artists that influenced King of America and his musical genre-spanning musical travels, Costello has curated a 70-song companion playlist for Vanity Fair, titled “Elvis Costello Presents Songs in the Spirit of King of America’s Music and Musicians,” available to stream now: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/04PD789PgOJWV1YKvobCyh?si=cc9e1f75537…
In addition to the Super Deluxe Edition box set, King Of America & Other Realms is available on 2CD with the new 2024 remaster of the album on CD1 and highlights from the box set on CD2, including studio recordings, demos and live recordings. The new remaster of King Of America is also available separately on both 140-gram black vinyl as well as limited edition 140-gram gold nugget color vinyl, exclusively via ElvisCostello.com, uDiscover Music and Sound of Vinyl.
Stream or purchase King Of America and Other Realms here: https://elviscostello.lnk.to/KingOfAmericaDeluxe
Titled Le Roi Sans Sabots, the second disc of King Of America & Other Realms collects Costello’s solo demos from 1985, including performances recently unearthed from two reels of demo recordings, cut at London’s Red Bus Recording Studios in the months prior to the King Of America sessions in Hollywood. “Brilliant Mistake” and “Blue Chair” are presented with radically different lyrics, shedding new light on the intention of key songs from the King Of America album. “Deportee” – later brutalized and distorted on “Goodbye Cruel World” – is heard in a direct and emotional vocal performance with acoustic guitar. Meanwhile, an early sketch of “Next Time Round” shows that it was actually written for King Of America but not recorded again until the album, Blood & Chocolate, released eight months later in September 1986. Also included is an outtake of “Shoes Without Heels,” a contender for King Of America that ultimately didn’t make the album; a different recording of the song would eventually be released on the 1987 rarities and unreleased tracks collection, Out Of Our Idiot.
The disc is bookended by the opening and closing title themes by The Coward Brothers, the pseudonymous side project that Costello and T Bone Burnett adopted for a series of tours in ’84 and ’85. The Red Bus Demos are sequenced together with previously released solo sessions recorded at Hollywood’s Ocean Way Studios. “If you are familiar with the songs of King Of America and then listen to the collection of sketches and solo performances on ‘Le Roi Sans Sabots’ you may see a different picture,” Costello writes in the accompanying essay, adding, “Assembling ‘Le Roi Sans Sabots’ has been a little like developing an old negative to discover a photograph, close to a very familiar image but crucially different in composition and implication. It seems that sometime after these initial solo sessions, I resolved to balance the break-up theme with lyrics with a more satirical note.” Also included are early drafts of “Jack Of All Parades,” and “Sleep Of The Just” along with solo versions of “Poisoned Rose,” “Indoor Fireworks,” “I’ll Wear It Proudly,” “Suffering Face,” and the piano ballad, “Having It All – written for a scene at the Eiffel Tower in the movie “Absolute Beginners.”
In early 1987 Costello played a six-night, sold-out stand at the Royal Albert Hall in London; three shows with the Attractions and three devoted to King Of America and other realms, with a band billed as The Confederates (the dictionary definition for ally or accomplice and nothing to do with America’s Civil War), featuring guitarist James Burton and bassist Jerry Scheff from Elvis Presley’s legendary TCB Band, drummer Jim Keltner, keyboardist Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and T-Bone Wolk, who added accordion and mandolin to the ensemble. The electrifying concert featured live renditions of several King Of America titles along with Costello’s takes on a host of great American songwriter’s songs: “Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line,“ made famous by Waylon Jennings, Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham’s “It Tears Me Up,” Arthur Alexander’s “Sally Sue Brown,” Allen Toussaint’s “Riverboat,” Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Your Funeral And My Trial,” Mose Allison’s “Your Mind Is On Vacation,” Ray Charles’ “What Would I Do Without You,” Jesse Winchester’s “Payday,” Dave Bartholomew’s “That’s How You Got Killed Before” and Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways.” This never-before-released concert, recorded on January 27, 1987, is captured on Disc 3 – “Kings Of America Live At The Royal Albert Hall” – which has been newly mixed from the multitrack tapes.
King Of America would mark the second in a long line of Costello’s albums to be recorded in the U.S. over the ensuing four decades and that singularly eclectic, musical American odyssey is chronicled in great detail on the 48-track 3-disc digest of studio recordings – spanning the studio albums Spike (1989, Hollywood and New Orleans), The Delivery Man (2004, Oxford, Miss.), The River In Reverse (2006, Hollywood and New Orleans), Momofuku (2008, Los Angeles), Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (2009, Nashville), National Ransom (2010, Los Angeles and Nashville) and Look Now (2018, Hollywood, New York City) – woven together with a slew of previously unreleased demos, outtakes and live recordings.
Some of Costello’s many collaborations with American musicians are represented throughout the three discs, labeled Il Principe Di New Orleans E Le Marchese Del Mississippi, El Príncipe Del Purgatorio and finally Der Herzog Des Rampenlicht, including several studio and previously unreleased tracks from his collaborations with New Orleans R&B legend, Allen Toussaint, and longtime creative accomplice, T Bone Burnett. In addition to a handful of songs from Costello and Toussaint’s collaborative album, The River In Reverse, included are live versions of “Bedlam” from that record and “Clown Strike,” arranged by Toussaint and performed with The Imposters, A.B. Crown and The Crescent City Horns in Montreal in 2006, and the Toussaint-penned, Lee Dorsey classic, “The Greatest Love,” as featured in HBO’s David Simon-produced, New Orleans-based series “Treme.” This version is being made available for the first time outside of the show while the Montreal performances are making their audio debuts, having been released on the long out-of-print DVD “Hot As A Pistol, Keen As A Blade.”
Discs 5 and 6 features nearly half of Costello’s Burnett-produced album, National Ransom, joined by “Lost On The River #12” from Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, the acclaimed 2014 Burnett-led project consisting of musicians singing and setting discovered Bob Dylan lyrics from 1967 to music. Costello offers unreleased recordings of “Quick Like A Flash” from the New Basement Tapes sessions, demos of the National Ransom tune “Church Underground” and album outtakes “Condemned Man” and “For More Tears,” the first-ever release of the latter song which has only ever been performed live, as well as a stirring live performance of “A Scarlet Tide,” Costello and Burnett’s Oscar and Grammy-nominated song for the film “Cold Mountain,” recorded at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville with Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Elsewhere on the collection, Costello duets with singers Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris on The Delivery Man tracks “There’s A Story In Your Voice” and “Heart Shaped Bruise.” The latter, recorded live with Harris at the Hi Tone in Memphis in 2004, was previously only available on the concert DVD “Club Date: Live In Memphis.” Rosanne Cash and Kris Kristofferson are joined by Costello on the captivating “April 5th,” one of two songs recorded by the elusive supergroup “C.C.K.”
King Of America & Other Realms culminates with three new recordings recorded in 2024: “Indoor Fireworks” (Memphis Magnetic Version), “That’s Not The Part of Him You’re Leaving” with Larkin Poe and a recent arrangement of “Brilliant Mistake” performed, as Costello remarks, “over a habanera rhythm in a minor key to mark the dark passing of the years and our elusive hold on hope, taking a detour into the 1933, Harry Warren/Al Dubin song, ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’ rather than just alluding to it in the lyric of the last verse.” The final song of the set is “That Day Is Done,” a song co-written by Costello and Paul McCartney for McCartney’s 1989 album Flowers In The Dirt, here performed with the gospel group The Fairfield Four, bringing this wild and wonderfully odd odyssey to a close.
Released in 1986, King Of America marked a significant shift in Costello’s career, both musically and personally. Unlike his previous albums with The Attractions, he mostly collaborated with a group of session musicians, including Ray Brown and Earl Palmer, and members of Elvis Presley's TCB Band, that he dubbed The Confederates, and curiously only listed himself as The Costello Show. Similarly, the songs were credited to Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus. A departure from the new wave and punk he made his name with, the record’s sound leaned heavily into American country and folk influences, showcasing Costello's versatility as a songwriter and musician. The album was critically acclaimed and helped to reinforce his artistic credibility during a time when he was transitioning away from the brash persona that had initially defined his career. This pivot not only broadened his musical palette but also solidified his reputation as one of the most innovative and enduring artists of his generation.
In the nearly forty years from its release, King Of America’s stature only continues to grow among fans and critics. Retrospectively, the album is seen as one of Costello’s best works, with All Music calling it “one of his masterpieces,” and Stereogum declaring it “the most successful of Costello’s pointed genre excursions, a detour into roots music and country that plays to his great strengths as a lyricist and storyteller.” Pitchfork hailed it as a “complex and conflicted album that, despite all the spit and polish, sounds lively and raucous,” while Spin remarked, “stately country-folk overtones lend the heartrending songs ‘Brilliant Mistake,’ ‘American Without Tears’ and ‘Jack Of All Parades’ a grandeur that feels timeless.”
