Day 359: Electric Light Orchestra – A New World Record
I try not to swear too much on this website, but fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck me I am devastated about Dolly Parton, she’s been my hero since I was a teenager. I can’t listen to her yet, I’d be too sad, so I’m choosing to listen to something that’s happy instead, and what’s happier than a bit of the old Electric Light Orchestra? Nothing, I say.
Album cover courtesy of Jet Records
Electric Light Orchestra, or ELO, was formed in 1970 in Birmingham by Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood and drummer Bev Bevan. They’d originally been in a group called the Move, but when they disbanded, the trio turned their side project into their main band. The Beatles had just disbanded, and they said they’d like to "pick up where the Beatles left off", creating orchestral and futuristic rock that’s taking influence from classical music and jazz.
A New World Record was released in 1976 as the group’s sixth studio album, and it was the first one where they pivoted into doing the shorter pop songs that they did for the rest of their career. It yielded them three top ten singles, with "Livin' Thing", "Telephone Line", "Rockaria!" and "Do Ya", and Jeff Lynne regarded it, along with their next album Out of the Blue, as the band at their peak.
I was surprised by how many of these songs I knew and loved, even though I thought of myself as a casual ELO enjoyer at best. So many of these songs were the type of songs you hear here and there that make you go “I love this one!”, and then you just don’t listen to it again. But I don’t know why, I feel like I’ve been missing out by not listening to them intentionally, because it did turn my evening around completely – there’s something so sunny about them, it can’t help but to make your night better, even with the slower, sadder songs.
It was exactly what I needed right now, sweet and kind of cheesy but in a lovely way. And I love rock, I love classical music and I love cheesy space stuff, obviously this was going to be a hit. And it’s just so well done, too – in different hands, something like “Rockaria!” with its operatic singing and story of a romance between a rock fan and classical fan and lyrics like “She loves the way Puccini lays down a tune / And Verdi's always creeping from her room” could fall apart into being unlistenable, but from them, it just sounds sweet.
ELO have some sort of a brand of magic that just makes me feel good, I couldn’t have chosen better today. And one thing I love about this project is how it’s just helping me collect more bands and artists into my pile of things that make me happy, I’m setting myself up for a good future. A New World Record gets a 9/10.