In the grand scheme of things, maybe it was a decent year to be Elvis Costello. After all, the veteran auteur wrapped up 2020 with the October release of his well-received new album Hey Clockface. Along the way, he made room for plenty of enjoyable detours as well: Offering up another version of a Clockface track but with Iggy Pop singing in French, shitting on the production work of Steve Albini and Jimmy Iovine, and apparently forming a supergroup called Dopamine with Black Thought, DJ Premier, T-Bone Burnett, Nathaniel Rateliff, and Cassandra Wilson. I mean, that’s a pretty vibrant couple of months right there.

But, of course, 2020 has primarily been a cruel and unforgiving year even for those of us who navigated it semi-unscathed. All the usual flickers of hope for a new calendar year seem particularly amplified and/or exasperated after all these months in the shadow of the pandemic — and, with vaccines rolling out, maybe a more positive forecast for 2021 isn’t completely out of bounds. So, accordingly: People are pretty excited to wave goodbye to this hell year and leave it in the rearview as soon as possible.

Turns out Elvis Costello is one of those people. After first teasing something called “Farewell, OK” on the 27th, Costello took to Twitter and kicked into his own midnight countdown on New Year’s Eve eve, leading up to the release of a new song. As the title “Farewell, OK” might suggest, the track is an enthusiastic goodbye to 2020; musically, it’s raw and emphatic in the vein of classic Costello material. Check it out below.