Elvis Costello (born Declan Patrick MacManus, 25 August 1954) is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s, and later became associated with the punk rock and New Wave musical genres. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader than that of most popular songs, and his music has drawn on many diverse genres; the critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine describes him as a "pop encyclopedia," able to "reinvent the past in his own image".