Tokyo goes pop!

Tokyo Storm Warning

Artist: Elvis Costello
Available on: Blood & Chocolate
Time Out says: Foreign artists commonly associate Tokyo with a kind of futuristic decay; a harbinger of dire things to come, erected in unstable concrete. Costello's song is one of the few songs that manage this without sounding embarrassingly over-sincere. The songwriter himself described the piece as 'a thug's nightmare travelogue', though he has also revealed that the sinister lyrical image of 'Japanese God-Jesus robots' actually refers to a toy he picked up on tour here — a strange, plastic Jesus that waved his cross around to indicate whether the owner's boyfriend or girlfriend was faithful or not. That sounds more like the Tokyo we know and love.