It's a bit difficult to argue the cred-bolstering relevance of ELO in 2005, given that it's practically impossible to find a current band that sounds anything like Mr. Only two reasonable complaints can be lodged: the baffling omission of choice slow jam "Can't Get It Out of My Head", and the pointless just-barely-two-discs length. Blue Sky" (and it's lesser-known sibling "The Diary of Horace Wimp"). Truthfully, it's fairly interchangeable with the other comps already on the market, covering the band's less-rewarding backbeat-obsessed early period through the heady disco days described above through to the proggier late-70s work which birthed "Mr. It's appropriate then, that there are numerous ELO greatest hits sets already available, with All Over the World only the latest entry. Only the Bee Gees were able to ride the wave of fashion more profitably, though each band's success should hardly be held against them.there's a reason why both are still heard on the radio incessantly.Īll of the above makes ELO an excellent greatest hits band, as there's not a whole lot to be found in the deep cuts of albums like Out of the Blue and Face the Music. To Lynne's credit, he didn't follow his rock peers in mocking the new dance sound, but rather embraced the accidental resemblance, recording the group's best singles ("Evil Woman", "Living Thing", "Telephone Line") in an extravagant and non-condescending fusion of disco and rock.
#Best of electric light orchestra update
So it was pretty much serendipity when, by the middle of the decade, classical-sounding strings were suddenly a hot property thanks the burgeoning disco scene, Walter Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven" even echoing ELO's own attempts to update old Ludwig van. made music that was sky-high on excess, drunk on the ambitious precedent set by the Beatles and the fact that, wow, studios have that many tracks to work with now?! The original vision for the Electric Light Orchestra was rather coarsely telegraphed by their name: a merger of pop, rock, and classical music that yielded some pretty embarrassing early moments (including the Beethoven/Berry mash-up of "Roll Over Beethoven", not included here) and some pretty great ones (rock + opera aria = "Rockaria!", included). Of course, Lynne's bold mixing of the disco and the rock seems almost accidental in retrospect- books tell me that disco didn't peak until the mid-seventies, while the self-titled first ELO album hit stores in 1971, so the chronology doesn't quite match up. New- ave compilations have somewhat dissuaded me of that notion, but the field of what is now classic rock most assuredly remained a genre that surely treated the influx of disco's dance beats and string arrangements as straight heresy, and it was against this backdrop that ELO made its heroic stand. ELO existed at a point in music history where I was brought up to imagine the armies of rock and disco locked in a mortal battle like the Cubs and Cardinals, wherein the two flavors were mutually exclusive to apartheid-like extremes thanks to fun things like racism and homophobia and fear of keyboards. However, a number of elements appear to be aligned against any sort of serious, non-kitschy ELO revival: 1) That absurd (yet appropriate!) name, 2) The incredibly Muppetish appearance of frontman Jeff Lynne, and 3) The group's all too easily parodied and carbon-dated sound, with its liberal use of falsetto and classical strings.īut the things that so firmly attach ELO to a particular time in music history (the 1970s) are also the things that make them so uniquely great. Blue Sky" all of a sudden became mandatory accompaniment for Charlie Kaufman-scripted films. Mr.Electric Light Orchestra is one of those ubiquitous bands that could be due for a second glance, a concept that briefly gained some momentum when "Mr. The Essential Electric Light Orchestra ( 2011 2‐disc compilation)
Playlist: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra Ticket to the Moon: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra, Volume 2 The Essential Electric Light Orchestra ( 2003 single‐disc compilation)Īll Over the World: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra The Swedish Collection - The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra Light Years: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra Strange Magic: The Best of Electric Light Orchestra The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra: The Chart Singles Collection The Very Best of the Electric Light Orchestra Eldorado: A Symphony by the Electric Light Orchestra