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One of Costello’s best known songs and a prime example of his witty wordplay, “Pump It Up” is pure sexual frustration, its high octane lyrics being a pun for the speaker’s desperate pleas for both sexual release and the raising of the booming music he’s overwhelming himself in.
Allegedly, Costello wrote the song while sitting on the fire escape of the Newcastle Hotel during his 1977 tour.
In his 2015 autobiography Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, Costello acknowledged that the song owed an inspiration to Bob Dylan:
"“Pump It Up” obviously took more than a little bit from “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. One night, many years later, Bob Dylan said to me: ‘U2! How could they do that to you? How could they take your song like that?’ It took me a moment to know what he was talking about, and a moment more to realise that he was putting me on. But then, U2’s “Get On Your Boots” was probably to “Pump It Up” what “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is to Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business”."
In 2021 some controversy was swirled up, linking the song to plagiarism. In a tweet from Billy Edwards, Olivia Rodrigo was called out for plagiarism on her track “Brutal”, the opening to her debut album Sour.
Edwards tweeted:
"First song on the album is a pretty much direct lift from Elvis Costello."
Edwards was referring to Elvis Costello’s song “Pump It Up” and the similarities of the opening riff found on “Brutal.” However, Costello dismissed the claims at plagiarism through Twitter, saying “That’s how rock and roll works.”
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