Elvis Costello provides a taste of his cynical capacity in (The Angels Wanna Wear My) ‘Red Shoes’, which is somewhat of an anti-fairy tale with more than a little foresight due to Hans Christian Andersen’s gruesome, classic fairy tale about a vain girl whose red shoes, once she starts dancing while wearing them, won’t let her stop. Costello’s character, who is a little old to be a biographical representation, makes a deal with the angels, who show him the secrets of sex, and once he gets the hang of it, he can’t stop. His girlfriend can and does, however. She gets tired of his lusting for her and is feeling repulsed and fed up in the chorus: “I know that she’s disgusted / (Oh, why is that?) / ‘Cause she’s feeling so abused / (Oh, that’s too bad)”.
She’s young with a healthy appetite for sex, and he just can’t keep (it) up: “She gets tired of the lust, but it’s so hard to refuse. How can you say that I’m too old”. The girl just wants to have fun, and she’s stuck with a guy who would prefer to settle down.
Despite the guy declaring his undying love and affection for the girl – “I’m so happy I could die”– she tells him to Drop dead! She goes off dancing without him and, to rub salt in the wounds, leaves with another guy. He looks to exact vengeance either on her conscience by his suicide or going after the guy she ran off with. In either case, he is wounded – “You got me punctured”. At first, he is pissed off at the turn of events, then as he becomes resigned to his fate, he finds cynical amusement in the situation he brought on himself.
Costello’s anti-hero has the twisted logic of a stalker-like the serial killer Joe in the TV series “You”, a dangerously charming but unfortunately obsessive man. His method for finding a girlfriend is to insert himself into the lives of young women and eventually lock them up, hoping they will form a bond with him and develop Stockholm Syndrome. “Oh, I was watching while you’re dancing away”.
Once the angels lose their power over him: “Since their wings have got rusted”., they want their red shoes back, which results in the character’s premature ageing and imminent death, Dorian Gray style, though it’s in song, not a painting. The deal for immortality is off the table.
‘Red Shoes’ was one of Costello’s best songs on a sensational album chock-full of classic tracks such as ‘Less Than Zero’ and ‘Alison.’ Nick Lowe, who had been with Brinsley Schwartz, produced “My Aim Is True” and used the band Clover in the studio. John McFee of the Doobie Brothers played guitar on ’Red Shoes’ and thought it had a little country rock flavour. Before given its title, he referred to the song as “That one that sounds like the Byrds.”
The story has been told that Costello wrote the song while he was still Declan McManus, riding a train from London to Liverpool in 1976. He had to keep humming the melody until he reached his home, where he could plug in a guitar and finish writing it. Underneath, ‘Red Shoes’ is about giving your all to someone who does not appreciate the level of your sacrifice or investment in the relationship, and especially the visceral feelings when the truth comes out. This is something that one usually doesn’t experience when still young and idealistic, which is probably why Costello has been quoted in a magazine article as saying, “I could write snappy lines like “Oh I used to be disgusted / and now I try to be amused” in my sleep, but it perplexed me a little to be suddenly writing this song about mortality at only 22.”
It would become his stock in trade, writing vignettes of real-life drama or the mundane human existence. Costello’s lyrics are often something like a Rorschach test in that they are understood instinctively rather than intellectually.
In the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, vanity is the sin and source of the terrible things that happen to the girl with the dancing shoes. As a last resort, the girl has her legs amputated, but the disembodied lower torso keeps on dancing. In Costello’s song, the sin is sex, and as anyone who grew up with ultra-religious parents knows, dancing unquestionably leads to sex, which leads to pregnancy, which means dropping out of school and being sent to the countryside for a few months of rest. The guy likely gets off with a good beating and is free to go back to the dance halls once he convinces the angels to make another deal for those red shoes.
