Elvis Costello on his 97-song collection, Past Love, and why he didn't sue Olivia Rodrigo over that “brutal” riff

The box set features collaborations with many great American non-fictional characters, including Allen Toussaint, Rosanne Cash, Dave Bartholomew, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and Emmylou Harris. I particularly like Lucinda Williams. You clearly love Lucinda Williams.

She is the second best Williams in music. I think even she would tell you that.

When you're in the studio with her, you can't tell if she's getting there because her process is different than mine. We did “Jailhouse Tears.” I was like, I don't think we're going to get this today. It doesn't seem like she really wants to do it. She busied herself with the headphones. And then suddenly she came onto the beam. And it was like, “Oh my God, I should be more careful now.”

There is a tremendous amount of music and variety in this set. Is there a theme?

The best way I can describe it is as the first encounter with a piece of music. Therefore, I must explain (in the liner notes) the mechanism by which I received news from abroad, as my father, my grandfather and my mother had done, and had worked out a different agenda than they had.

How do you find new music today? Do you just let Spotify feed you stuff?

I don't. I have an account, but I only go there when someone sends me something.

Who is the best young rock band right now? Is it Paramore? The year 1975? Mane skin?

I've seen Maneskin a few times. I like her. I didn't listen to rock music. My son likes Foster the People. But his favorite band is Justice. They are French. I would say it's a kind of techno-prog band. We visited her in Brooklyn. Twenty-four hours after playing “Wolf Trap,” I was sitting in a warehouse in Brooklyn watching “Justice.” And it was fucking awesome. One of the greatest shows I've ever been to. It was exciting.

When this ends for you – and I hope it doesn't for another 100 years – your first two albums will inevitably dominate your public legacy, despite all the other great music you've made since. Is that important to you?

At various times I've wrestled with this a bit… When my father died, he was the voice of a very famous soda commercial. In fact, the headlines said: “Secret soda drinker dies.” As if he had never done anything else in his 50-year career. I have no doubt that my death will be accompanied by a similar humiliation. But the truth is, if you wrote a song 50 years ago, which is almost since I wrote the first drafts of “Alison,” and it's still being played by anyone, think about it which year I started I write the songs I'm known for. Some of these are from 1975. Go back 50 years and tell me what songs were still being played (mid-seventies). If they persist, they are considered standards. So whether anyone else likes it or not, I suspect there are some who have joined this company. I don't consciously look at it that way, but it is a historical fact. The strange thing is that very few of my songs are sung by other people. By far the most successful and ubiquitous music for other performers I have been involved in writing The Julia letters…Not that many people play – except maybe “Pump It Up”. And then they usually don't play it, but allude to it in their own arrangements. How Olivia RodrigoThe producer of 's obviously did that. Well, I haven't found any reason to pursue them legally for this because I think it's ridiculous. It is a common language of music. Other people clearly thought differently about other songs on this record. But if there were no quotes, there would be no Bach. There would be no Mozart. There would be no Sonny Rollins. Therefore we can't worry about it.