Imperial Bedroom - Background

Background

In addition to being the first album of original material not produced by Lowe, this was the first of Costello's albums to be recorded without any of the songs having already been performed live. The songwriting and arrangements were done during the twelve-week recording session at AIR Studios. It was recorded at the same time as Paul McCartney's Tug of War, on which Emerick simultaneously served as recording engineer.

Unlike the previous two albums, there was no intent to have the songs in any particular arrangement or production style. Instead, they covered a variety of styles and included songs that were written at the end of the Trust (1981) sessions, through Costello's production of Squeeze's East Side Story, and during the "Nashville adventure" of Almost Blue.

Imperial Bedroom continued a direction, starting with Trust, where Costello used a piano to compose songs, which was different from the writing approach he used on his first four albums. As initially recorded, the album sounded very much like Trust, but none of these versions survived to the final recording, except the intro and outro of "Man Out of Time". Instead, the band experimented with different instrumental choices, including a 40-piece orchestra for ".....And in Every Home". Costello also attempted to vary his vocal performances, such as the contrasting vocal tracks in "Pidgin English". Many of these studio embellishments had to be stripped when the songs were played live in concert.

Despite some of the lyrical content, Costello had imagined this to be his most optimistic album to date.

The album inspired the title of Bret Easton Ellis' novel Imperial Bedrooms, a sequel to Ellis' earlier novel Less Than Zero, whose title was borrowed from Costello's song "Less Than Zero".