Elvis Costello Campaigns for Radio Stations to Ban His 1979 Song ‘Oliver’s Army’ over N-Word Lyric

Elvis Costello is campaigning for radio stations to ban airing his 1979 hit, “Oliver’s Army,” over its contemporary usage of the N-word.

The song, which first appeared on the album Armed Forces, features the line, “Only takes one itchy trigger/One more widow, one less white ni**er.”

Though the song is one of Costello’s biggest UK hits — it peaked at number two on the UK charts — and is a critique of the British Army for targeting recruitment among the ranks of the lower classes in the 1970s, its use of the N-word has become controversial in recent years. The N-word in the song refers to how upper class Brits often referred to Irish and other lower class citizen soldiers at the time.

But now, the word has become such a hot button issue that the singer/song writer told the Telegraph that if he were writing the song today, “I’d think twice about it.”

“That’s what my grandfather was called in the British army – it’s historically a fact – but people hear that word go off like a bell and accuse me of something that I didn’t intend,” said Costello, who is of Irish extraction himself.

As a result of the constant attacks on the song, Costello has vowed to take it out of his set list. “I’ve decided I’m not going to play it,” he told the paper.

He also said that bleeping out the word on the radio just makes matters worse, and he’d prefer that radio stations simply ban the song.

Bleeping out the N-word “is a mistake. They’re making it worse by bleeping it for sure. Because they’re highlighting it then. Just don’t play the record!” Costello added.

“It would do me a favor,” he said of banning the song. “Because when I fall under a bus, they’ll play ‘She,’ ‘Good Year for the Roses’ and ‘Oliver’s Army.’ I’ll die, and they will celebrate my death with two songs I didn’t write. What does that tell you?”

Costello’s next album with The Imposters, The Boy Named If, is due out before the end of the month.

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