Professional ratings
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Source	Rating
AllMusic
Blender
Chicago Tribune
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Entertainment Weekly	A+
Q
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Uncut
The Village Voice	B+

Imperial Bedroom is a 1982 album by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. It was the second Costello album, after Almost Blue, not produced by Nick Lowe. Production duties were handled by Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. "I wanted to try a few things in the studio that I suspected would quickly exhaust Nick's patience," as Costello put it in the liner notes to the 1994 Rykodisc reissue.

It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll. In 1998 readers of Q magazine named it the 96th greatest album ever. In 1989, it was ranked No. 38 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Albums of the 80s. In 2003, the album was ranked number 166 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at No. 59 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s". The album reached number 6 in the UK charts and number 30 in the USA but the singles were less successful. "You Little Fool" and "Man Out of Time" each briefly appeared in the UK Singles Chart, but neither charted in the USA.

In addition to being the first album of original material not produced by Lowe, this was the first of Costello's albums to be recorded without any of the songs having already been performed live. The songwriting and arrangements were done during the twelve-week recording session at AIR Studios. It was recorded at the same time as Paul McCartney's Tug of War, on which Emerick simultaneously served as recording engineer. Other working titles were "Revolution of the Mind", "Music To Stop Clocks" and "PS I Love You".

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