My #27 All-Time Favorite Album: A New World Record by Electric Light Orchestra

A NEW WORLD RECORD, by the British band Electric Light Orchestra, is my #27 all-time favorite album.  ELO in its early years was much more popular in America than Britain.  Its founders were Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne...Wood would leave in 1972 after only a couple of years and guitarist Lynne took over the band's creative direction while serving as its lead vocalist.  Other regular members of this group that tended to take on (and shed) different musicians over the years were drummer Bev Bevlan and keyboardist Richard Tandy.  A New World Record, their sixth studio album, came out in 1976 and is widely regarded as their best.  Continuing with ELO's tradition of fusing rock and classical orchestral music with a not-so-subtle tribute to the Beatles and their producer George Martin's arrangement skills, this record is loaded with beautiful and compelling songs.  The only song on it I dislike is Telephone Line, and that's most certainly because the radio mercilessly overplayed it to the point that I became sick of hearing it.  My favorite song of 1976...as I lived through that year...is the track Livin' Thing, and the two sides' respective opening tracks, Tightrope and So Fine, represent my next two favorite songs from the album.  Do Ya, on the second side, is the heaviest rocker on the album, while the closing track Shangri-La is very dreamy and reflective.  Rounding out this album are the songs Mission: A New World Record, Above the Clouds and Rockaria...it's all less than 37 minutes in length, two of them easily fitting on a compact disc.  Electric Light Orchestra's follow-up work Out of the Blue, a double album, is also loaded with good songs...but afterward they began to slide into a pop/disco act that I felt detracted from their earlier appeal.  Different incarnations of ELO have sprung up over the years...Lynne is still out there performing the old hits.  He's also well known as a member of the supergroup Traveling Wilburys, along with his old idol George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison.  You can hear A New World Record off YouTube if you like.  Although Jeff Lynne has expressed his affection for the old Beatles music, in my opinion much of the harmonic singing on his group's records reminds me more of the Beach Boys...and that indeed is a compliment...