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Shipbuilding (song)

"Shipbuilding"
Shipbuilding.jpg
Single by Robert Wyatt
B-side "Memories of You"
"Round Midnight"
Released 20 August 1982
(reissued 22 April 1983)
Format 7", 12" single
Recorded 1982
Length 3:04
Label Rough Trade
Writer(s) Music: Clive Langer
Lyrics: Elvis Costello
Producer(s) Elvis Costello, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley (credited as "Clangwinstello")
Robert Wyatt singles chronology
"Grass"
(1981)
"Shipbuilding"
(1982)
"The Age of Self"
(1984)

"Shipbuilding" is a song written by Elvis Costello (lyrics) and Clive Langer (music). Written during the Falklands War of 1982, Costello's lyrics discuss the contradiction of the war bringing back prosperity to the traditional shipbuilding areas of Clydeside (Yarrow Shipbuilders), Merseyside (Cammell Laird), North East England (Swan Hunter) and Belfast (Harland and Wolff) to build new ships to replace those being sunk in the war, whilst also sending off the sons of these areas to fight and, potentially, lose their lives in those same ships. The best known version of the song is the version recorded and released as a single by English singer-songwriter Robert Wyatt in August 1982 a few months after the Falklands War, although it was not a hit until it was re-released eight months later on the first anniversary of the conflict.

In September 2013, Elvis Costello and the Roots released an answer song written in the perspective of the other side of the conflict, called "Cinco Minutos con Vos" ("Five Minutes with You"). The song is a duet partly sung in Argentinian Spanish by La Marisoul.

According to Clive Langer, he had written the tune for Robert Wyatt but was not happy with the lyrics that he had written himself. Langer played the tune to Costello at a party hosted by Nick Lowe, and within days Costello had produced what he described as "the best lyrics I've ever written". In a 1983 interview with NME, Mark Bedford of Madness, who played stand-up double bass on the single, recounted the history of the song:


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