Watch Your Step

"Watch Your Step" is a song written by new wave musician Elvis Costello and performed by Costello and the Attractions on their 1981 album, Trust. Originating from lyrics he wrote as a 20-year-old, "Watch Your Step" was inspired by Costello's experiences on tour as well as by dub music. The song was originally a louder rock song, but the final released version is slower and quieter. The song was released in the USA as the sole single from Trust in 1981. It failed to chart there and was not released as a single in the UK. Despite this, the song has seen positive critical reception and has been a live favourite. Background According to Costello, "Watch Your Step" originated from lyrics that he wrote in the mid-70s, when he was 20 years old. Costello had copied these lyrics from notebook to notebook for over five years until he "found their rightful home". The lyric "Listen to the hammers falling in the breaker's yard" reference a memory Costello had of watching the scrapping of steam locomotives on the news when he was a child. Other lyrics derived from his experiences on tour; references to "carnival desires" were, according to Costello, "just a picturesque way of saying that you might have to choose between chasing the wrong girl and avoiding gangs of lads shouting abuse and spewing into the gutters". The lyric "Backslapping drinkers cheer the heavyweight brawl" comes from, as Costello explained, "the kind of dubious lodgings [on tour] where the police drank after hours with local ne'er-do-wells and the bar didn't close until dawn".