Listen To Elvis Costello’s New Single, ‘No Flag’

Elvis Costello has released his impassioned new single ‘No Flag,’ which arrives accompanied by an animated lyric video which you can check out below.

Although the singer-songwriter recorded the new track in February, according to a statement, the song is fitting for the current frustrations plaguing the world. “No time for this kind of love/No flag waving high above,” Costello sings. “No sign for the dark place that I live/No God for the damn that I don’t give.”

Costello recorded the track in three days in Helsinki, Finland at Suomenlinnan Studio, which is just a 20-minute ferry ride away from the Finnish capital. “I wanted to go somewhere nobody knew me,” Costello said in a statement. “So, this is ‘The Helsinki Sound.’”

On 11 June, Costello will join Rosanne Cash for ‘Present Perfect: Songs of Protest and Memory,’ which is part of the Live With Carnegie Hall series. The event also includes Brandi Carlisle, Gary Clark Jr., Marc Cohn and Ry Cooder. Last month, the artist joined Sheryl Crow and several other artists for a live-stream benefiting the Jazz Foundation of America’s COVID-19 Musicians’ Emergency Fund.

‘No Flag’ follows Costello’s most recent album with The Imposters, Look Now, which was released on 12 October 2018 through Verve/Decca in the UK and Concord in the US. It marked his first full-length album since Wise Up Ghost, his 2013 collaboration with The Roots and his first with The Imposters since 2008’s Momofuku. Look Now was co-produced by Costello and Latin Grammys winner Sebastian Krys.

“I knew if we could make an album with the scope of Imperial Bedroom and some of the beauty and emotion of Painted From Memory, we would really have something,” Costello said in a statement at the time of Look Now’s release, referring to his widely-acclaimed 1982 studio album with The Attractions and his later collaboration with songwriter Burt Bacharach.

Listen to the Best of Elvis Costello on Apple Music and Spotify.

Format: UK English