Elvis Costello Announces My Aim Is True 49th Anniversary Box Set

On October 2, UMe will release My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition), an expanded five-CD box set telling the story of how Declan MacManus became D.P. Costello, briefly vanished and reappeared as Elvis Costello—and how his debut album, recorded in a small London studio, became the first public step in a singular and enduring career.

The collection features 104 tracks, including 52 previously unreleased songs, demos, outtakes and live performances. A new 2026 remaster of the original album was created from the Pathway Studios master reels.

Costello also provides a new 72-page essay featuring contributions from Nick Lowe, John McFee, Gregg Geller, Bill Flanagan, Warren Zanes, Rosanne Cash, Peter Wolf and Jim James, along with recollections from Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas.

Preorder My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition) HERE and listen to the box-set editions of “Watching The Detectives” HERE.

Across 104 tracks—demos, masters, outtakes, live performances, interviews and other rare recordings—plus the new remaster of the original album from the original analog tapes, the collection traces Costello’s transformation from a young computer operator through his attempts to break into the London singer-songwriter scene while recording songs in his bedroom and dreaming of them being sung by other artists.

It continues through three unsuccessful singles for Stiff Records—“Less Than Zero,” “Alison” and “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes”—recorded with members of the American band Clover, before Costello formed the Attractions and scored a U.K. hit with “Watching The Detectives.”

The vinyl edition of the original album was created through an all-analog AAA process.

Each of the set’s five discs—My Aim Is True, The Blue Print, The Stranger In The House, Becoming The Attractions and Covered In Clover—is accompanied by extensive new writing from Costello.

The package also includes rare and previously unseen photographs, handwritten lyrics from his notebooks, diary entries from 1976 and lists of songs he was performing solo while being rejected by publishers and A&R representatives across London—before Stiff Records heard something in his songs.

The collection was produced by Elvis Costello and Steve Berkowitz.

As a preview, Costello has shared a selection of highlights illustrating the evolution of one of his most beloved early songs, “Watching The Detectives.”

Available now are four previously unreleased recordings: the “Pathway Studios Trio Version,” featuring Costello on guitar and vocals, Andrew Bodnar on bass and Steve Goulding on drums; a formative solo electric performance from the U.K. television program Good Afternoon, hosted by Mavis Nicholson, which aired on September 30, 1977; an excerpt from Costello’s first television interview; and a live performance with the Attractions from San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom on July 8, 1978.

The recordings appear alongside the newly remastered 2026 version of the original track.

Stream the different editions of “Watching The Detectives” HERE.

“When first proposed, I thought the whole idea of celebrating a 50th Anniversary of My Aim Is True was preposterous,” Costello writes at the beginning of the collection. “It made my teeth itch.”

He continues: “It couldn’t just be set up like a venerable object in a glass case.”

Instead, My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition) presents the album as the beginning of a still-unfolding story. Its first disc pairs the original album with “Watching The Detectives,” creating a hybrid of the original U.K. and U.S. track listings.

Recorded with producer Nick Lowe and the Marin County band Clover during four six-hour sessions at Pathway Studios, the album emerged with little budget, limited overdubbing and Costello singing live on nearly every track.

“Last night I listened to this wonderfully wonky record in its entirety for the first time in about 45 years,” Lowe writes in a new note for the set, recalling Pathway’s atmosphere of “cigarettes, ill-laundered clothes, exposed electrical units, and urinal disinfectant.”

He adds that making the album gave him “the priceless opportunity to observe at close range the extraordinary work of one of the foremost composers of popular song of this or any other era.”

In his accompanying essay, Costello remembers slipping away from his day job at Elizabeth Arden under the pretense of illness to deliver an unsolicited demo to the newly opened Stiff Records, then encountering Lowe outside the nearby Underground station.

Within weeks, Lowe was producing his first session. Soon afterward, Stiff founders Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson supplied a new name and a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses, completing what Costello calls “a Superman costume in reverse.”

The tweed jacket and blue suit seen on the album cover had been given to him by his office manager. The tear in one sleeve, he later claimed, came from a narrowly dodged bullet.

The second disc, The Blue Print, gathers 17 recordings from 1975 and 1976, including 13 previously unreleased tracks. The songs span bedroom tapes, early Pathway recordings and 13 performances from a 1976 session at the Hope & Anchor Studio.

Also included is a recording preserved by Costello’s ’70s contemporary Charlie Dore, who recently discovered a reel she had taped of Costello trying out songs during a blazing London afternoon in 1976.

Together, the recordings reveal ideas that would resurface throughout Costello’s work. A lyrical couplet and image eventually found their way into “Accidents Will Happen,” “Watch Your Step,” “King Horse” and “Just A Memory,” while “Radio Soul,” a song praising the power of broadcasting, later became a sarcastic song about the BBC called “Radio Radio.”

“The more I’ve delved into these notebooks, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that these handwritten notes might actually be ‘The Blue Print’ for a lot of the work I did over the next five or six years,” Costello writes.

The Stranger In The House contains 28 demos, outtakes and early band recordings, 15 of which have never been released, including every surviving outtake and demo from My Aim Is True.

Costello’s early, rather unfashionable fascination with country music can be heard throughout the disc in songs he imagined pitching as a backroom writer. The collection reaches back to Flip City, the band Costello describes as “Pre-Professional.”

“In the so-called Pub Rock scene, we barely qualified as also-rans,” Costello writes. “We were ready and we were willing, but the bookings were few and our progress was slow.”

The disc also includes more of Dore’s tapes and follows the evolution of songs including “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” and “Living In Paradise” through the session that produced “Watching The Detectives.”

Costello’s 72-page essay includes commentary and recollections from Nick Lowe and Columbia Records’ Gregg Geller. Steve Nieve recalls his first recording session, providing the keyboard parts on “Watching The Detectives,” while Pete Thomas tells the story of befriending Clover while working in California in 1975.

Thomas introduced the band to Stiff Records founder Jake Riviera in San Francisco and later played drums with Clover in the same city during the group’s only live performance with Costello of My Aim Is True in 2007.

The fourth disc, Becoming The Attractions, opens with a solo performance of “Alison” from Costello’s U.K. television debut. It follows his first live appearances under his new name and the sudden momentum of his arrival in America during late 1977 and 1978.

Its 25 tracks, 12 previously unreleased, include live recordings, broadcasts and a Nashville Room soundcheck from the summer of 1977, when Costello and the newly formed Attractions used a four-Sunday residency to sharpen their increasingly fast and ferocious set.

Music journalist, television producer and author Bill Flanagan chronicles Costello’s arrival in America, where listeners encountered a musical hybrid that resisted easy classification: country-rock, soul, reggae and terse British pop delivered by a singer who appeared at once confrontational and deeply romantic.

Further recollections from Warren Zanes, Rosanne Cash, Peter Wolf—then of the J. Geils Band and Costello’s friend of 49 years—and Jim James of My Morning Jacket accompany Costello’s account of that first American trip.

The stories range from seeing Iggy Pop in San Francisco and meeting Tom Waits in Los Angeles to replacing the Sex Pistols on Saturday Night Live and abruptly abandoning “Less Than Zero” for “Radio Radio.”

The collection closes with Covered In Clover, an entirely unreleased recording of Costello’s 2007 reunion with Clover at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall.

Performing My Aim Is True in its original U.K. sequence before concluding with “Watching The Detectives,” Costello and the musicians returned to the songs they had recorded together three decades earlier, when he was 22 years old and had scarcely worked with players of their caliber.

“Making my first record seemed like the beginning of something that I’d imagined for a long time, before I had any sense of a potential audience, let alone the expectation and the assumptions of others about songs written and performed in mere minutes,” Costello writes. “Nevertheless, I raise a chaste glass to My Aim Is True and all who sail in her.”

My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition) will be released October 2 via UMe as a five-CD and digital box set. The new remaster of the original album will also be released on 180-gram black vinyl and CD.

Preorder all formats HERE.

My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition) Tracklist

Previously unreleased tracks are marked with **.

CD 1: My Aim Is True

1. Welcome To The Working Week – 2026 Remaster
2. Miracle Man – 2026 Remaster
3. No Dancing – 2026 Remaster
4. Blame It On Cain – 2026 Remaster
5. Alison – 2026 Remaster
6. Sneaky Feelings – 2026 Remaster
7. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes – 2026 Remaster
8. Less Than Zero – 2026 Remaster
9. Mystery Dance – 2026 Remaster
10. Pay It Back – 2026 Remaster
11. I’m Not Angry – 2026 Remaster
12. Waiting For The End Of The World – 2026 Remaster
13. Watching The Detectives – Single Version

CD 2: The Blue Print

1. I Turn Around – Hope & Anchor Studio**
2. Losing You – Hope & Anchor Studio**
3. Leverman – Hope & Anchor Studio**
4. Citizen Junction – Hope & Anchor Studio**
5. I Hear A Melody – Pathway Studios
6. Poison Moon – Bedroom Recording
7. Wave A White Flag – Bedroom Recording
8. Mercury Wings – Ms. Dore’s Tape**
9. Jump Up – Hope & Anchor Studio**
10. No Star – Hope & Anchor Studio**
11. Walk On – Hope & Anchor Studio**
12. Radio Soul – Hope & Anchor Studio**
13. Clean Money – Hope & Anchor Studio**
14. Don’t Put A Levy On My Love – Hope & Anchor Studio**
15. Play It Safe – Hope & Anchor Studio**
16. Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver) – Hope & Anchor Studio**
17. I Can’t Turn It Off – Hope & Anchor Studio

CD 3: The Stranger In The House

1. Radio Sweetheart – My Aim Is True Outtake
2. Cheap Reward – Bedroom Recording
3. Mystery Dance – Bedroom Recording
4. Stranger In The House – My Aim Is True Outtake
5. Running Out Of Angels – Hope & Anchor Studio**
6. Just Like A Jukebox – Hope & Anchor Studio**
7. I Don’t Want To Go Home – Pathway Studios
8. Blame It On Cain – Bedroom Recording
9. Blue Minute – Ms. Dore’s Tape**
10. Pay It Back – Bedroom Recording**
11. Exiles Road – Flip City – Hope & Anchor Studio**
12. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door – Flip City – Hope & Anchor Studio**
13. Sweet Revival – Flip City – Hope & Anchor Studio**
14. Pay It Back – Flip City – Hope & Anchor Studio**
15. Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver) – Flip City – Hope & Anchor Studio**
16. Living In Paradise – Hope & Anchor Studio**
17. Welcome To The Working Week – Pathway Studios
18. Miracle Man – Bedroom Recording**
19. Miracle Man – Pathway Studios
20. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes – Ms. Dore’s Tape**
21. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes – Pathway Studios
22. Waiting For The End Of The World – Pathway Studios
23. Living In Paradise – My Aim Is True Outtake
24. Call On Me – Pathway Studios
25. Watching The Detectives – Pathway Studios Trio Version**
26. No Action – Pathway Studios Trio Version
27. Poison Moon – Ms. Dore’s Tape**
28. Stranger In The House – Ms. Dore’s Tape**

CD 4: Becoming The Attractions

1. Alison – What’s On Granada Reports
2. Introduction By Dave Robinson – Live, The Nashville Room
3. Mystery Dance – Live, The Nashville Room
4. Pay It Back – Soundcheck, The Nashville Room
5. Radio Sweetheart – Soundcheck, The Nashville Room
6. Sneaky Feelings – Soundcheck, The Nashville Room
7. Crawling To The U.S.A. – Soundcheck, The Nashville Room
8. Lip Service – Pathway Studios**
9. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes – With Introduction, Top Of The Pops**
10. Interview No. 1 – Good Afternoon with Mavis Nicholson
11. Watching The Detectives – Good Afternoon Broadcast**
12. Interview No. 2 – Good Afternoon with Mavis Nicholson
13. Hoover Factory – Good Afternoon Rehearsal**
14. I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself – Live Stiffs, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.
15. Whole Wide World – Live Stiffs, University of Leicester, Leicester, U.K.**
16. KSAN Intro – Old Waldorf, San Francisco, CA
17. Pump It Up – Old Waldorf, San Francisco, CA**
18. Lip Service – Unknown Field Recording**
19. Mystery Dance – Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA**
20. Blame It On Cain – Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA**
21. Less Than Zero (Dallas Version) – Warner Theater, Washington, D.C.
22. Waiting For The End Of The World – The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH**
23. Miracle Man – Warner Theater, Washington, D.C.
24. Watching The Detectives – Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA**
25. I’m Not Angry – Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA**

CD 5: Covered In Clover

1. Welcome To The Working Week – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
2. Miracle Man – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
3. No Dancing – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
4. Intro To Blame It On Cain – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
5. Blame It On Cain – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
6. Alison – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
7. Intro To Sneaky Feelings – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
8. Sneaky Feelings – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
9. Intro To Red Shoes – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
10. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
11. Less Than Zero – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
12. Mystery Dance – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
13. Pay It Back – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
14. I’m Not Angry – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
15. Waiting For The End Of The World / Gloria – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
16. Watching The Detectives – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
17. Mr. Moon – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
18. Intro To The Love Trilogy – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
19. Love Has No Pride – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
20. Love Is Gone – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**
21. (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding – Live, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, November 8, 2007**

Elvis Costello & The Imposters With Charlie Sexton Tour Dates

Sept. 10 – American Music Theatre – Lancaster, PA
Sept. 12 – OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino – Niagara Falls, ON
Sept. 13 – Agora Theatre – Cleveland, OH
Sept. 15 – Packard Music Hall – Warren, OH
Sept. 16 – Royal Oak Music Theatre – Royal Oak, MI
Sept. 18 – Frauenthal Theater – Muskegon, MI
Sept. 20 – Riot Fest – Douglass Park – Chicago, IL
Sept. 24 – Botti at Sea III – Victoria, BC

For more information, visit ElvisCostello.com.

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Meta Description: Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True gets a 49th anniversary five-CD box set October 2, featuring 104 tracks, 52 previously unreleased, and a new 2026 remaster.