My Ten Favorite Girl Songs: Girls Talk (#3)

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It's time to sail into the top three of my favorite songs with "girl" (or some variation thereof) in the title. This is an idea that @teamfreak16 came up with and I jumped on that idea too quickly to talk about. Here's the next song on my list. #3: Girls Talk I figure if we're going to match on a song, it'll be this one. Written by Elvis Costello in 1979, his friend Dave Edmunds recorded it first. Linda Ronstadt, a big fan of Costello's, also recorded it. (That's why I don't have an artist listed up there with the song.) And, of course, Costello -- the man who wrote it -- finally released it, albeit as the B-side to "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down." Take the three versions of the same song and you get three really different songs. Ronstadt sings it from the perspective of a woman who's participating in the "girls talk" (Costello did say the song was about women gossiping). In fact, the photo on the cover of Mad Love (the album the song was on) features Linda talking on the phone...which goes along with this song much better than "Mad Love," the title track. Costello's version is so dang short (nothing particularly wrong with that: I mean, "Welcome to the Working Week" is less than a minute and a half in length) that he leaves you begging for more of those wonderfully twisted lyrics of his ("the word up on everyone's lip stick's that you're dedicated, you may not be an old-fashioned girl but you're gonna get dated"). Dave Edmunds' version -- with apologies to Linda and Elvis (both of whom I love) -- is my favorite of the lot. And, no, it wasn't the first time I heard the song (Ronstadt's version was the first one I heard). In true Dave Edmunds fashion he made it into a perfect power pop song. For the life of me, I don't know why Edmunds wasn't a major, major superstar. But then, I said that about Squeeze and Marshall Crenshaw in the last two days, didn't I? Girls Talk Written by Elvis Costello Recorded by Dave Edmunds From Repeat When Necessary, 1979 Also recorded by Linda Ronstadt From Mad Love, 1980 Also recorded by Elvis Costello Released as a B-side, 1980 Here's Dave, with the other members of Rockpile, doing my favorite rendition: