this song is so effin great...

Yeah, It's definitely my favourite Elvis Costello song. I can only really understand small bits of the lyrics, but it's a brilliant song all the same. The drumming's amazing, particularly at the start.

I thought it was "Folks will grab some fancy tricks"...

In all of Costello's songs, a beautiful girl automatically connotes evil (Watching The Detectives, Lipstick Vogue, etc) for some reason, and I think this song continues that trend.

Definitely about plastic surgery and vanity. work it out urself. its very simple.

Chelsea is/has been at various times an entertainment and sometime red-light district of London. With this bit of knowledge in hand the rest of the song's meaning falls out fairly easily. Truly enough, another of Elvis' misogynistic, or at least feminambivalent tracks, disappointed by the tawdriness of the everyday dressed up flimsily as the exotic and so on. Around the time this song made the hit parade in England, according to Elvis in an interview somewhere, he got into a cab and asked to be driven, where else, to Chelsea, on some business or other. Supposedly the driver turned around with a sneer and a "Ha, Ha, bloody Ha!"

Glad to know it's cristal clear for you; care to detail? I still don't get it. How does that explain "Men come screaming, dressed in white coats/Shake you very gently by the throat" or "Everybody's got new orders/Be a nice girl and kiss the warders" ?

More of Elvis' "sexual paranoia," as Rolling Stone called it. Again, Elvis observes a young girl going to an older man. The older man is "sixty-six" and preys on young girls. "Capital punishment" is a different meaning, the "capital" means money, and the "punishment" is the girl giving herself to prostitution. A warder is a guard at a prison--the victim in the song must kiss her captor.

this is the song that first got me into elvis costello. i can't say i've ever heard another song with the same subject matter..
anyway, an awesome song and great for first-time costello listeners

this song has such a great beat.

I've always assumed this song was about the Chelsea Asylum, which was referred to simply as 'Chelsea'... The lyrics seem to make sense: warders, men in white coats, i don't want to go to Chelsea... also the reference to children and teachers - the military asylum housed war orphans...

While I'm leaning towards this song being about prostitution, I also think it could be about something else, but the lyrics that attribute to prostitution and the lyrics that can be attributed to an asylum don't seem to coalesce anywhere nice, so I'm gonna stick with prostitution.

"photographs of fancy tricks, to get your kicks at sixty-six" could be referring to some risqué ad for the prostitutes. Something sexy to lure people in.

"He thinks of all the lips that he licks
And all the girls that he's going to fix" this is basically the guy fantasizing (in what seems to me, a very malevolent tone)of what he is going to "do" and has done to all these girls.

"She gave a little flirt" is the prostitute trying to lure her customer in, but I interpret the "gave herself a little cuddle" in two different ways. She could either being smushing her breasts together to give herself some cleavage, or she could be "hugging" herself for comfort because this isn't something she wants to do. She's scared.

"But there's no place here for the mini-skirt waddle" meaning that you can't just be tempting people, you really have to get in there and submit yourself to what you are selling.

ThunderCow's explanation for "capital punishment" seats well for me. I'm not sure about the "she's last year's model," but I've always assumed that whoever the prostitute is, she's getting older and she's not "fresh" anymore, thereby getting less desirable.

This leads to her being confused for all these girls "they call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie" because now she's just like all the other girls on the street that she's working/competing with.

The refrain I've always took to be the two people, the prostitute and her customer, in a sort of relationship and the time of the "sell," and you can get his feelings and the girl's feelings at what she is doing.

"I don't want to go to Chelsea" the girl doesn't want to work there anymore. "Oh no it does not move me" she is not attracted to the lifestyle of the people she is with. "Even though I've seen the movie" I always thought that this referred to maybe a glammed up version of her lifestyle seen in a movie that made her choose it. Now she rejects what she saw.

"I don't want to check your pulse" Now the girl is with her customer, and she's having second thoughts, and she is starting to pull away. "I don't want nobody else" her customer is drawing her back in, saying that he wants HER, not anyone else because he paid her. "I don't want to go to Chelsea"

Essentially, that's the whole life on the street/prostitution bit that I'm sure of. I always contributed the lyrics that sound like a psych asylum to be the prostitute as she has gotten older and become crazy or depressed because of all the things she has done in her life that have ruined her.

The state or someone puts her into an asylum, but there are still people there who take advantage of her "everybody's got new orders, be a nice girl and kiss the warders" and "one's named Gus, one's named Alfie" are the new people she has to give her body to.

It's a song about the destructive nature of allowing sex become a perverse and forced thing, and how it ruins people. But that's my take on it.

I suppose this song refers to the Andy Warhol movie, "Chelsea Girls." The photographs, Warhol's polaroids, I've seen the movie, the models, the drugs, all the girls he's gonna "fix" meaning heroin. He doesn't want to be part of that type of scene event though he's "seen the movie." For all I know he visited with Warhol or else he was more using "Chelsea" as a metaphor of a drugged up, pop fashion scene.

typo above. not "event" but even...as in, even though he's "seen the movie."

There's never just one - we try to hit them all......in every song......

No second guesses on this ride - we cant affect reality....so he'd prefer to stay away.

Ya dig?

I think that EC is torn between his lust and his guilt about seeing a prostitute.
"I don't want nobody else
I don't want to go to Chelsea "

In part I think there's an element of the women (fashion models, or prostitutes, or?) being quickly discarded as 'yesterday's'. The lyrics "she's last year's model / They call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie" I think refer to Elsie the cow, the symbol for Borden milk, which is or was the biggest milk brand in the US--in other words, Natasha is so last-year, she looks like a cow (too fat).

Could it be that the men in white coats are at an institution dealing with eating disorders (reportedly common in fashion models) on an in-patient basis? Be anexoric or be discarded like Natasha! But don't let anyone SEE your disorder (finger down your throat privately, please).

Could the he, at sixty-six, be a photographer (like EC on the cover) or a fashion designer? Is EC saying such men use models like prostitutes?


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I think that Elvis was involved with Bebe Buell (the model) at this time so was probably involved heavilyin the life she lived which would have been quite alien to him at that time. He probably considered it a mad lifestyle. Chelsea is associated with high end fashion so this ties in with the modelling ( the album this is from is called 'this years model') but chelsea has also historically been linked with asylums - I believe bedlam was situated there in 18th & 19th century. It seems to me that he is trying to link madness and modelling/fashion ( see Bruno- the movie!!)

Most of you are on the right track, however, the man is referring to the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan.

i don't think this is a reference to the chelsea hotel.. i believe the title is a pun on the old UK national service song 'i don't want to go to china' (sung by servicemen who were being sent to, surprise surprise, china). so the choice of location is fairly random and by way of a joke. it's chelsea in london though, there are no references to the chelsea hotel elsewhere in it, and surely, anyway, being quite a grammarian, he would have called the song 'i don't want to go to THE chelsea' otherwise?