I've never really thought that Elvis Costello truly appreciated his dedicated fan base. I guess I just assumed that he sort of did what he was feeling and couldn't care less about whether or not anyone liked it. Maybe I'm wrong. I love this answer from an interview after being honored with the ASCAP Founders Award.

I'm aware of the fact that with every change I both lose and gain people from a potential audience, and this is why I am reviled in some areas of the record industry for not adhering to brand identity. I am the person they fear most (laughs). In some respects I’m the person that proves that not listening to A&R advice is actually a lifetime of adventure. Listening to that nonsense that you must protect your identity and all of that timidness is the absolute antithesis of rock and roll.

To my mind, when I made King of America in the 80’s and it was all acoustic, that was more of a punk rock gesture at the time than to be screaming and shouting. So was The Juliet Letters. So was Painted from Memory. Because, relative to what people expect of me, I'm much happier to do the thing that confounds expectations, and make people aware of my curiosity in music and invite them into the world that I'm trying to create. I'm not doing this stuff to show off my versatility; I just love lots of different forms in which music can be expressed and I actually don't care about critical opinion or record company opinion. I care about reaching a number of people, and while I'm aware that some people will walk away aghast at the sound of The Juliet Letters record or Painted from Memory or even this record I'm working on now, there are many other people who will relax into it, or who will dive into it like the deep pool that music is, and they'll say "Oh, yes, that other stuff, I've heard him do that before, so now this is more curious to me."

For me, it all works out in the end. I have a free-floating group of listeners who I greatly appreciate that go with me through a lot of these changes. Some find the next change or emphasis not to their liking and they may drift away. Then something else I do regains their attention. I have to go with what's true to me, and I think the smart people appreciate and respect that I'm doing it for sincere reasons and that I'm not being perverse.

Those people who are superficial about me and only say "Oh, it's that angry guy in the glasses," I don't care about what they think. They never understood me from day one. They never understood the tenderness of a song like "Alison." They only heard the superficiality. A lot of the ideas of what it is I do are written by overgrown boys who live alone and don't know many women. I mean to say that they have no experience of life. They're like Comic Book Guy in "The Simpsons." That's who writes those sort of reviews of my records. And I know that's true.

I do know some things. I have lived a little bit of a broader experience, so while I don't want to be highhanded about it, I can't obviously limit myself to this very narrow definition of what's hip and what isn't hip. Because I know what's hip. What's hip is what's hip to you in the moment, you know? And if that's the gentlest or the loudest sound, that's what's hip to you, and that's what you need. There's a time in life for Hoagy Carmichael. There's a time in life for Claude Debussy. There's a time in life for Jerry Lee Lewis. There's a time in life for Destiny's Child. All of these things have their moment.