Benjamin Zacher

ID299: True Crime

Research Paper

04/03/2020

Elvis Costello’s “Alison”: A Merciful Murder Ballad

The fusion of music with law and crime has formed an unorthodox marriage which, in

turn, has created a subgenre of music called the “murder ballad.” Songs belonging to this

subgenre deal with crime and/or death and are believed to have originated from the

premodern era. The basis for murder ballads mostly stems from harmful emotions like jealousy

and envy, and detrimental actions such as revenge, betrayal, infidelity, and forced sexual

gratification. These desires culminate into song, typically written in the first-person, and can be

either fictional or reflect a real-world scenario. Contemporary artists have adopted the custom

of murder ballads, performing covers of traditional songs while writing and recording their own

variations. Folk-inspired musicians like Bob Dylan, The Band and The Byrds helped usher in the

modern adaptations of these ballads, while more recent entertainers such as Rihanna and The

Decemberists have produced new interpretations. Marshalled by Dylan, singer-songwriters

have led the way for murder ballads to move into the mainstream, which has resulted in songs

being analyzed to determine whether they belong to the genre.

One such singer-songwriter to receive this critique is British new wave musician Elvis

Costello, whose 1977 song “Alison” has endured constant speculation of being a murder ballad.

“Alison”, released on Costello’s debut album My Aim Is True, describes the feeling of

disappointment over watching a former love who has moved on to a new relationship. Costello
has revealed little on the meaning of the track, divulging most of the information in his

autobiography,

I’ve always told people that I wrote the song “Alison” after seeing a beautiful
checkout girl at the local supermarket. She had a face for which a ship might
have once been named. Scoundrels might once have fought mist-swathed duels
to defend her honor. Now she was punching in the prices on cans of beans at a
cash register and looking as if all the hopes and dreams of her youth were
draining away. All that were left would soon be squandered to a ruffian who told
her convenient lies and trapped her still further. (Costello 179)

Partly a result from the lack of background information on the song, “Alison” has garnered a

reputation for being a murder ballad. Despite Costello’s objections in a 2002 interview with

Rolling Stone where he stated “[“Alison”] isn’t about murder,” continuous misinterpretation has

led to Costello to further deny the allegations in his autobiography, saying, “I look at all the

words in the refrain and I still find it remarkable that many people have failed to understand

what is being sung after a thousand or more repetitions” (188). Costello’s dismissal of “Alison”

being a murder ballad makes it difficult to refute, but there are arguably some gray areas to this

claim.

What I will argue with this paper is that, by definition, “Alison” is a murder ballad. The

existing cases made for the song belonging to the genre circulate around the song’s lyrics,

where the song’s narrator, whom has been overcome by jealousy, insinuates that he “wish[es]

that [he] could stop [her] from talking.” He follows up with his most violent stance, exclaiming,

“I think somebody better put out the big light / ‘Cause I can’t stand to see you this way.”

Costello makes his intent clear in the song’s repeated chorus, addressing the eponymous
Alison, “Alison, I know this world is killing you / Oh, Alison, my aim is true.” While Costello has

rejected the idea of the song being about murder, I will argue that “Alison” reflects the killing

of, or the desire to kill, a loved one out of mercy rather than jealousy.

The song’s inspiration has been left vague by Costello, but self-references to his own

relationships imply a connection to his then-faltering marriage with Mary Burgoyne. Writing in

his autobiography, Costello admits,

I believed that “Alison” was a work of fiction, taking the sad face of a beautiful
girl glimpsed by chance and imagining her life unraveling before her. It was a
premonition, my fear that I would not be faithful or that my disbelief in happy
endings would lead me to kill the love that I had longed for. I have no
explanation for why I was able to stand outside reality and imagine such a scene
as described in the song and to look so far into the future, or what in the world
would make me want this terrible prediction to come true or become untrue.
(187)

Graeme Thomson, author of a Costello biography, asserted that “‘Alison’ is for and about Mary,

plain and simple.” Burgoyne and Costello’s marriage was failing, largely because of an

unfaithful string of sexual encounters by Costello during the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

Married in 1974, Burgoyne was feeling the repercussions of Costello’s career by the time of My

Aim Is True’s release in 1977. In the lead-up to writing, releasing and promoting his debut

album, Costello began focusing more on his music career before quitting his daytime job by the

time “Alison” was released as a single. By the end of the 1970s, Costello was embroiled in an

affair with Bebe Buell, which signified the end of his marriage. Costello’s adoption of the
stereotypical “rock ‘n’ roll” lifestyle marked doom for his personal life, and that was catalogued

in “Alison”.

“Alison” is loosely autobiographical, as Costello recounts his regrets in becoming

enveloped with the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle while negating his wife. In the song, Costello imagines

a scenario where the “beautiful girl” is married to his “little friend.” Costello has not seen

Alison in “so long,” and is unsure if she was actually “loving somebody,” but is aware that “it

isn’t [his].” The singer’s feeling of jealousy and envy culminates into an accusatory jab at the

husband while addressing Alison, saying, “You used to hold him right in your hand / I’ll bet he

took all he could take.” Realizing his mistake in abandoning his wife and ruining their marriage,

the singer threatens her, descending into “wish[ing] that [he] could stop [her] from talking /

when [he] hear[s] the silly things that [she] say[s].” Costello makes his final warning, suggesting

that “somebody better put out the big light.” While Costello never expresses how Alison feels

about her new marriage, he interprets her actions as being forced, and that she yearns to be

back with him. He bemoans that “this world is killing [her],” and admits that his “aim” has

always been “true,” meaning that, despite his infidelities, his love and admiration has always

been directed at her.

Costello is no stranger to dealing with death and unfaithfulness. Alongside “Alison”, My

Aim Is True features tracks like “Mystery Dance”, which opens with the lyric, “Romeo was

restless, he was ready to kill / He jumped out the window ‘cause he couldn’t sit still,” and the

aptly-named “Waiting for the End of the World”. “Sneaky Feelings” depicts the misfortune of

carrying romantic feelings for someone but being unable to tell them, while “No Dancing”

refers to a relationship falling apart because of a string of embarrassing events. “Alison” is

strategically placed in the middle of My Aim Is True, noticeably serving as the lone ballad on an

album full of new wave and pub rock tracks. Its production is polished, offering a contrast to

the crude and raw style of “Blame It On Cain” and “Sneaky Feelings”, the preceding and

succeeding tracks, respectively. This additional attentiveness and care to the track prompts

“Alison” to stand out, providing further speculation that it carries a greater meaning on the

album.

While Costello has refused to place a name to the real Alison, he has admitted that the

singer of “Alison” is the cause of the titular woman’s troubles. In his autobiography, Costello

wrote,

There was never any violence intended in the refrain, just culpability. ‘This
world’ that was ‘killing’ the heroine embraced all the circumstances I’d imaged
for that nameless girl, a deadening of dreams through betrayal into bitterness.
That the singer was the one doing the damage was as much as I could admit.
(188)

In “Alison”, Costello imagines a world where he abandons his love, only to find her soon after

with another love. He is overrun with guilt, and consequently presumes that she is unhappy,

and desires to be back with him. This theoretical situation reflected Costello’s then-failing

marriage with Mary Burgoyne, where he understood the potential consequences of becoming

involved in rock-and-roll but pursued it anyway. His guilt, powered by the legitimacy of this

occurring in real life, leads to the proposition of “murdering” Alison. Unable to do so in

actuality, Costello conveys his deepest remorse in “Alison”, pleading with her to come back to

him, but realizing that his infidelities have eliminated any possibility of this. He recognizes the

futility, and, out of blind mercy and jealousy, desires and demands for her death.
 Although no death occurs, “Alison” is, by definition, a murder ballad, albeit an

unconventional one. Unlike most murder ballads, it does not deal with either a fictional or non-

fictional serial killer, nor does a death take place. Similarly, while there is the demand for

death, it is not done out of evil desire. Instead, it stems from presumptive mercy and envy.

Meanwhile, despite Costello’s constant objections in interviews and in his autobiography, there

is self-admitted confirmation of “a deadening of dreams through betrayal into bitterness,”

which reflects the diminishing marriage of Costello and Burgoyne. While Costello did not save

his marriage, it fueled a guilt-ridden hypothetical scenario where he made a threatening plea

for the fictional Alison, or Burgoyne. This endeavor for a merciful death, of a love Costello

feared he would betray because of his “fear that [he] would not be faithful” or his “disbelief in

happy endings [which] would lead [him] to kill the love that [he] had longed for,” cements

“Alison” as a self-aware fictional and autobiographical murder ballad.

 Works Cited

Bliss, Karen. “Alison.” Rolling Stone, 7 May 2012,

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/alison-87988/.

Costello, Elvis. My Aim Is True, Columbia Records, 1977.

Costello, Elvis. Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink. Blue Rider Press, 2015, pp. 179-188.

Thomson, Graeme. Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello.
Canongate, 2004, p. 74.