I Hope You're Happy Now

    "I Hope You're Happy Now" is a song by Elvis Costello, a great song.  Now, understand please, as I grew up the two signal musical influences upon my life were The Beatles (the very first records I ever had and one of the very few things my parents agreed on) and hip-hop, which I have mentioned before entered my life in 1980 and really hasn't totally left yet.  So, being fully immersed in the world of rap for so long, I sadly missed a lot of the best music ever made while it was still new.  Yes, I am totally shitting on all of you come-lately apologists who incessantly whine how music in the 80's sucked.  Outside of my comfortable world of unlaced Adidas (which really weren't comfortable at all, but they DID piss off my Dad - which was kind of the point), there were albums from The Smiths, Joy Division/New Order, Bauhaus/Tone on Tail/Love & Rockets, et.al. - including some genuine fucking gold from Elvis Costello.  I was an inveterate and unapologetic reader of the music press, even though much of the music I loved was never covered within the pages.  I am just a reading junkie.  I'd read every issue of Rolling Stone as it came out and was aware of artists in many other genres because of this exposure.

    

    Elvis Costello always seemed to me a bit of an anamoly.  It didn't take a great intellect to see how record companies and their psychophants in the music press were fond of pigeonholing artists into nifty little boxes, and since there wasn't a title quite so apt as "alternative rock" way back then, he was lumped into the New Wave of groups appearing with alarming regularity from across the Atlantic.  This distinguished title was also applied to musical concerns as diverse as The Police and Frankie Goes to Holywood, as if that isn't a fucking Grand-Canyon-wide chasm to traverse insofar as talent and marketability was concerned.  I couldn't ever really parse how much of Elvis' image was artifice or just sincere strangeness, he seemed out of place and time in that respect.  The sharp suits and rockabilly haircut and those way-too-large eyeglasses seemed a conscious effort to distance himself from his perfectly over-coiffed and mascara-wielding contemporaries. That I could dig.  I had some friends that  had his tapes and records (yeah, that long ago) but they never seemed to play them and I don't recall seeing many or any of his videos until much later on MTV.  It struck me that some people just considered it "cool" to be able to say, "yeah, I listen to Elvis Costello" whilst they awaited their well-deserved plaudits from their oh-so-hip friends.  Every scene had these type of douchebags, even my own - so I could at least philosophically appreciate that maybe there was something that I may have been missing.  But, what were soon to be classic records from my hip hop life were being released seemingly every few weeks and I was really too busy failing at breakdancing and beatboxing to take on another project of that scope.  Besides I wasn't cool enough to fit in with those New Wave/New Romantic kids, hip hop was far more accepting where I was from.  

    So I came to the alternative music party quite late - around 1989, when hip hop had started what looked like an irreversible decline.  Studio gangsters and an Afro-Centric nature were the order of the day and I was pretty. Fucking far from either.  Thee was always true, great rap music to be found (and still is) but goddamn, you had to put in some work now to find it.  See my future screed, "What Happened to My Hip Hop", coming to an Internet near you, eventually.

    "I Hope You're Happy Now", if you're unfortunate enough to have never heard it, is a very catchy give-or-take three minutes of bile and spite directed towards an ex.  Sources eventually uncovered that the unlucky recipient was Elvis' first wife.  Be that as it may, it goes out to any of our collective exes, of either sex or orientation.  It just applies.  He's not really hoping that she is "Happy Now", pretty fucking far from it, actually - and that's a universally held notion that anyone who's had a broken heart could relate to.  He's hiding a tremendous amount of psychic pain and feelings of betrayal behind some incredibly biting bravado, that is crowned in the last verse with, "...I knew then what I know now/I never loved you anyhow?and I hope that you're happy now".  He also gets to throw some pointed jabs at the fellow she is now lavishing her affections upon, to a great and eviscerating effect.  Again, this all stems from the fact that he is obviously still quite hurt and begging her notice by putting his torment to music, despite his claims to be over it and stating with seeming sincerity, "...and I know that this will hurt you more than it hurts me...".  Nice try, Mr. Costello.

    Either way and at the end of the day - it's an incredible song written and sung by a true genius of the form.  Do yourself a favor, if you don't already have at the very least his Greatest Hits compilation in your collection - do go out and get it.  You're bound to find one or two (or 10) gems that no one else could have written or sung as well as he did.

    My only lingering thought concerning this classic song, as with most songs of it's ilk - those wonderfully catchy ditties that are fueled by a pain so sharp and omnipresent that only by putting words to music will it begin to be silenced and knowing that he's pretty much regularly toured for the nearly 30 years since it's release....is how does it feel to play it so often?  Does the pain still smart? Or does it eventually morph into a sort of gratitude, that something which at the time crushed you so completely and brought those feelings to light has connected with millions and has become truly a song for the ages?  I know what I believe, but I suppose it's different for all of us.