Elvis Costello begs radio stations to stop broadcasting Oliver’s Army | Entertainment News

Elvis Costello has pleaded with radio stations not to air his controversial record, ‘Oliver’s Army’.

The 67-year-old musician – whose real name is Declan McManus – has come under fire in recent years for using the N-word in his 1979 hit, and after testing an additional censorship verse at his gigs he insisted he doesn’t want radio stations playing the track at all.

He said, “On the last tour, I wrote a new verse about censorship, but what’s the point? So I decided not to play it. [Bleeping the word out] is an error. They make it worse by making it beep for sure. Because then they highlight it. Don’t play the record!

The musician – who also had hits with ‘She’ and ‘Good Year for the Roses’, both written by other songwriters – admitted it would ‘do him a favour’ if he was taken off the air altogether .

He told The Telegraph newspaper: “You know what. This [not playing it] would do me a favor. Because when I fall under a bus, they play ‘She’, ‘Good Year for the Roses’ and ‘Oliver’s Army’.

Elvis is sure that when he dies he will only be ‘famous’ for writing songs he didn’t compose, unlike his self-written hit ‘Oliver’s Army’.

He added: “I will die, and they will celebrate my death with two songs that I did not write. What does that tell you?”

Elsewhere, the singer also explained why he was on the Royal Variety Show in December 2021, although he insisted he was not “a royalist”.

He said: “I was there to honor my father. It’s no secret that I don’t have strong royalist feelings, despite accepting a gong [Costello was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to music], which, as I said at the time, just shows that they don’t read my lyrics. My dad sang “If I Had a Hammer” about the dignity of work, because he’s worked his whole life.”