Green Shirt
"Green Shirt" is a song written by new wave musician Elvis Costello and recorded by Costello with his backing band the Attractions. The song appeared on Costello's 1979 third album, Armed Forces. Lyrically inspired by the influence of the National Front and the Quisling Clinic in Wisconsin, "Green Shirt" features a vocal recorded by Costello after a "night of carousing". "Green Shirt" was not released as a single at the time of its 1979 release, but in 1985 it saw single release to promote The Man: The Best of Elvis Costello. The single reached number 68 in Britain. Since its release, the song has been lauded by critics as one of Costello's best album tracks and has made several appearances in Costello's live setlist. Background "Green Shirt" was described by Elvis Costello as "a paranoid song that I wrote ... about the simplification of seductive signals, the bedroom eyes that lead to tyranny". The song was lyrically inspired by the Quisling Clinic, a building in Madison, Wisconsin that Costello reportedly saw and wrote down the name of while driving past. Costello later wrote that, while he had only ever associated the name "Quisling" with Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling, the combination