Best And Worst
Entertainment Weekly includes North on all the lists...
MUSIC-10 best songs of 2003
Elvis Costello ''North'' (album; Deutsche Grammophon) Costello took his cues from Sinatra's gorgeously despondent late-'50s concept albums but went Frank one better, giving the balladic despair an arc and a shock ending: unprecedented (for him) romantic ebullience.
MUSIC -5 worst songs of 2003
Elvis Costello ''North'' (album; Deutsche Grammophon) ''Someone took the words away,'' he sings at one point. Someone also took away the melodies, the tension, and the drive of ''When I Was Cruel'' and replaced them with an interminable barrage of lugubrious cabaret jazz. There's music to clear the room, and then there's this -- music to make the room fall into a deep slumber.
(Submitted by David Gertner)