('79) I don't know the story of the covers. The one below is the most common one but I prefer the elephant stampede cover. Costello's song writing is at it's prime here. It makes all the sense in the world that fellow Liverpudlian Paul McCartney called him England's greatest songwriter. Great material about Armed Forces here.

Armed Forces is the third studio album by British musician Elvis Costello, released in the UK by Radar Records and in the US by Columbia in 1979. It was his second album with the Attractions, and the first to officially credit the Attractions on the cover. The album had the working title Emotional Fascism.

The North American version omitted the track "Sunday's Best" and replaced it with Costello's version of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding," which had been released the previous November as the B-side of Lowe's "American Squirm" single. Initial pressings of the album in the UK and US also included a promotional three-song EP, Live at Hollywood High.

Armed Forces has appeared on various "greatest albums" lists in both Q magazine and Rolling Stone magazine.

After 1978's punk-inspired This Year's Model, Costello moved in a direction more influenced by new wave music. About this change, Costello remarked, "At the time, it seemed as if we were making an impossibly sophisticated leap from the sound of This Year's Model, but listening now there are very few production devices that sit between the listener and the songs. The confidence and cohesion of The Attractions' playing is the product of 12 months of intense touring. The sessions were not without dissent and tension, but we probably never had quite this level of consistent musical agreement again."

Armed Forces was originally intended to be named Emotional Fascism; Costello explained, "Two or three half-formed notions collided uneasily in that title, although I never would have admitted to having anything as self-conscious as a ‘theme’ running through the songs. Any patterns that have emerged did so as the record was completed or with the benefit of hindsight. Personal and global matters are spoken about with the same vocabulary; maybe this was a mistake. Betrayal and murder are not the same thing. The first of them only deadens the soul. Some of the highly charged language may now seem a little naive; it is full of gimmicks and almost overpowers some songs with paradoxes and subverted clichés piling up into private and secret meanings. I was not quite 24 and thought I knew it all. Read more