Elvis Costello has announced that his biggest chart hit, Oliver’s Army will be retired because the lyrics contain a racial slur that is linked to the Northern Ireland conflict. Declan Patrick McManus rose to prominence in the post-punk new-wave scene in the mid-to-late 1970s, winning a slew of honors along the way, including three Grammys. Costello confirmed in a recent interview about his new album The Boy Named If that he will no longer perform Oliver’s Army in live gigs. The song Oliver’s Army is from Elvis Costello And The Attractions’ album Armed Forces, released in 1979.
The song is about the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland from the 1960s until the late 1990s, and it includes a racial epithet that was used to disparage Catholics. For years, radio stations have aired the song, which has sparked controversy due to the singer’s usage of the N-word in his lyrics. “Only takes one itchy trigger/One more widow, one fewer white [n-word],” Costello sings in the song.
Costello has announced that he will retire the record and will not perform it on future tours, more than 40 years after its release. “If I wrote that song now, maybe I’d think twice about it,” he told The Telegraph. “If I wrote that song today, maybe I’d think twice about it. [White n-word] was what my grandfather was called in the British army. It’s historically a fact but people hear that word, go off like a bell and accuse me of something I didn’t intend.” The 67-year-old singer begged radio stations to stop playing the tune. In another interview with The Guardian, he said, “Unfortunately, that two-word slang is a historical fact.” “It was a derogatory term for Irish Catholics, which I use to make the point.”
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