Bebe Buell once claimed that Elvis Costello (with whom she had an affair until 1985, when she allegedly aborted their child) had written a number of songs (including those on Armed Forces) about her. Costello answered the charge in the album's liner notes:
"On the eve of recording this album a girl arrived on my doorstep from America," he said. "At best we were strangers with a coy and theoretical entanglement. I thought that she was to be coming for a short visit and that I might at least satisfy my curiousity about her. However, she turned up with eight pieces of luggage like a mail-order bride and moved in. I was too stupid and vain to resist. She'd later claimed to have inspired most of the songs on this record -- all of which were already written when we met. This was said also about the previous release -- a chronological impossibility -- and many of my other compositions to this day. It is a tragic delusion about which I wish I could say: 'I shall not dignify that with a response' but 'dignity' doesn't come into this story."
Nor was this Buell's most outrageous claim. She once suggested that Prince had written "Little Red Corvette" about her (and that the song's lyrics in fact read, "Bebe, you're much too fast") -- despite the fact that she and Prince had never even met!
Sources
Rolling Stone, Oct. 30, 2003, p. 30
