High Fidelity by Elvis Costello

Album: Get Happy! (1980)

License This Song

lyrics

artistfacts

Songfacts®:

In the '70s and '80s, manufacturers of audio equipment often marketed their products as "High Fidelity" or its abbreviated version, "Hi-Fi," indicating that it could help create a quality listening experience. "Fidelity" also means loyalty, so if you have fidelity in a cause, you will not waver from it. In Costello's song, he uses the marketing jargon as a play on words, telling the story of couples who cheat (infidelity) and how they justify their actions.
Costello wrote of this song in his 2015 book Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, where he described it as "an incredibly sad delusion of a song in which a couple finds themselves in different rooms with different lovers, one of them still irrationally believing that their pledge will endure the faithlessness."
"High Fidelity" is one of Costello's favorites. He explained in Rolling Stone: "This is a pretty exciting record. It's very raw singing and a great rhythm track. We cut it in Holland, where we had nothing else to do but go mad in the studio."
A movie called High Fidelity was released in 2000. Starring John Cusack and Jack Black, the film (based on a 1995 book by Nick Hornby), is set in a record store where music geekdom abounds. This song doesn't appear in the film, but Costello's song "Shipbuilding" does. Among sanctimonious record store employees, Costello was a favorite, so it's fitting that he is on the soundtrack along with Bob Dylan, Stereolab and The Velvet Underground.
In celebration of Elvis Costello's 70th birthday, Variety published a list titled "Elvis Costello Turns 70: His 70 Best Songs, Ranked." "High Fidelity" was #1. Variety said:

"High Fidelity" comes close to being a pure distillation of what historically made so many Costello tracks great: It feels as urgent as a heart attack; it's haunting; it's filled with wordplay that somehow accentuate the deeply felt emotions rather being a distraction; it feels like something that is happening in your life right now, even if it happened 10 or 20 years ago; and it's over before you know it."