Back in action! Back in…sensible tops?
Topped the Chart:
24th July 1960 (for 1 week)
1 week total
As well as politics, a week used to be a long time in music. When Kate Bush dared to take three years to follow up The Dreaming, she found herself in the NME’s Where Are They Now column—hard to believe in 2024 when five years between records is standard practice.
Things moved even faster in the 1950s. By the time Elvis, the biggest star on the planet, entered the army in 1958, he had released five studio albums, a best of and countless film soundtrack EPs, having only broken through internationally in 1956. The gap between new music was around two years, an eternity at the time, with Presley rehearsing new material as he prepared to demob. The question must have lingered- would the fans still be there when he emerged in civvies?
Well, the fact that he appears on this list is proof that the fans hadn’t forgotten about him in that time thanks to a trickle of releases recorded before he put on the olive green fatigues. But Elvis himself had changed: instead of leather and all manner of tight trousers, Elvis Is Back! featured the King in a neat, buttoned-up jacket. The message was clear—this is the first “grown up” pop album by a teen idol, making Elvis the Harry Styles of his day.
Previously in this series, we’ve bemoaned just how short Presley’s rock n roll era lasted, and so it goes here. Elvis and his team (producers Steve Shoals and Chet Atkins; loyal bandmates Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana) have done what all popstars do after their initial flush of fame and looked to what’s popular and current, with slick and polished results. We get a tear in Presley’s voice a la Roy Orbison in The Girl of My Best Friend and Girl Next Door Went A-Walking, doo-wop harmonies and piano on I Will Be Home Again and Thrill of Your Love, and even elements of The Everley Brothers in the storytelling of Soldier Boy.
While these elements aren’t necessarily what the public wanted from Elvis in 1960 (as reflected in the sniffy reviews of the time), he wears these styles well and the best of these tracks (The Girl of My Best Friend) run close to his best singles of the era. There’s still a bit of the ol’ Pelvis for those swearing off this grown up pop makeover. Fever is the album’s highlight, particularly effective in its whispered sexuality and stripped-down, Heartbreak Hotel skeletal production where the rest of the album runs full-bodied. It Feels So Right is amorously threatening and that early whiff of danger in its frankly filthy delivery and central guitar lick, while Dirty, Dirty Feeling features promises to “drag you home with me girl” over a jumping flea brass lick.
The only real misstep on the record is Like a Baby, a song that oversteps the mark from the more lascivious tracks into something downright creepy. It’s not just in the way that Elvis coos that he fell for his subject “’Cause you looked like a baby,” a frankly bizarre saxophone riff hangs in the corner like a peeping tom, jumping out of the shadows after every line before slinking back into the dark.
It’s a rare clanger on an album that likes at you like an eager puppy that’s just had a bath: it’s mostly clean, it’s bright and colourful…but can’t we have the mangy old pooch that kept trying to hump the table legs? The army damage had been done, and it would be a long wait for the King to don his leather crown once again.
Score: 7/10
Have you listened to Elvis is Back? Where does it rank for you in the King’s greatest LPs? Sound off in the comments below…
Tracklisting:
1. Male Me Know It
2. Fever
3. The Girl of My Best Friend
4. I Will Be Home Again
5. Dirty, Dirty Feeling
6. Thrill of Your Love
7. Soldier Boy
8. Such a Night
9. It Feels So Right
10. Girl Next Door Went A-Walking
11. Like a Baby
12. Reconsider Baby
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