Speak with Vanity fairCostello reflects on his illustrious career spanning over 50 years, and is asked what he thinks of his first two albums – My purpose is true (1977) and This year’s model (1978) – dominates his legacy as his time in music comes to an end.

“When my father died, he was the voice of a very famous lemonade commercial,” he recalls. “The headlines basically said, ‘Secret lemonade drinker dies.’ As if he had never done anything different in his fifty-year career. I have no doubt that a similar outrage will accompany my downfall.

“But the truth is, if you wrote a song fifty years ago, which it has been almost since I wrote the first drafts of it Alisonand that’s still played by everyone – well, think about what year it was when I started writing the songs I’m known for.

“Some of these are from 1975. Go back fifty years and tell me what songs were still being played (mid-1970s). If they are durable, they are considered standards. So whether anyone else likes it or not, there are a few that I suspect have joined that company.

He continues: ‘I don’t consciously consider them that way, but it is a historical fact. The strange thing is that very few of my songs are performed by other people. By far the most successful and ubiquitous music for other artists I’ve been involved in writing The Julia Letters… There aren’t that many people playing – except maybe Pump it up. And then usually not playing, but referring to it in their own arrangements. As Olivia Rodrigo’s producer did, of course.

“Now I haven’t found any reason to legally prosecute them for that because I think it would be ridiculous. It is a shared musical language. Other people obviously felt differently about other songs on that record. But if there were no quotations, there would be no Bach. There would be no Mozart. There would be no Sonny Rollins. So we can’t worry about that.”