Tag: ELO

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366 Songs 313: Brontosaurus

To me, “Brontosaurus” is a song that points at all manner of other musical futures while staying defiantly in the “pop” space – It’s surprisingly heavy for the Move, and between that crushing bass riff and Roy Wood’s whiny screamy vocals, suggests that perhaps the band was going to move into the psych-esque space of proto heavy rock that was forming around the time this was recorded. But, then again, there’s the (very Who-esque) switch up with the acoustic chords and piano at 2:32 where things start to swing and get a little Mod-y, and the freakout that follows suggests a possibility closer to the Small Faces (or even the Faces), that odd idea of a laddish band of musos who just wanted to mess around and have fun and somehow accidentally ended up producing some great music along the way. To see a band with as much potential for greatness in 1970 as the Move turn into ELO just a year later is kind of heartbreaking, in its way.

…Really. Just tragic.

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366 Songs 326: Sunflower

It’s unsubtle, unoriginal and overproduced, but I love Paul Weller’s “Sunflower.” Honestly, I’m not sure if I could really explain why, beyond the fact that I always find myself singing along to the chorus, and that I like the way it sounds – by which I mean, the actual sound of the instruments, the gruffness of the guitar at points, the thud of the drums in the chorus, the way the flute sounds and producer Brendan Lynch’s random beeps – but it’s a song that I always find creeping up on me when I hear it, overpowering my intent to sneer because it so blatantly rips off not just one, but two of Weller’s major influences during this period of his career. I mean, anyone with a passing similarity with the Beatles will think that “Dear Prudence” lives on in the draped guitar of this song –

– and, it does, I guess, but really, the guitar really comes from ELO’s “10538 Overture,” which took “Dear Prudence” and made it a little heavier. I mean, listen to that riff:

It’s a riff so nice that Weller used it again on his next album, even more shamelessly:

Suuuuuure you’re the changing man, Paul (I still love that video, though).

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366 Songs 235: Goodbye Mr. A

This song always translates into the death of my father, in my head; it was on constant rotation on the music television channels in the UK at the time I was there as he was getting sicker, getting worse and not coming back, and I had those channels on a lot for some reason. Background noise that didn’t talk to me too much, I guess.

It’s weird, because musically the song is about something else entirely; it’s Britpop if Britpop had worshipped ELO instead of the Kinks and the Beatles – Listen to that organ, or those swooning backing vocals, and you’ll know it’s true. There’s something very generic about the song despite that, though – outside of those two touches, it could be anything or come from anywhere; it’s as if the band had listened to “Mr. Blue Sky” on repeat for a day before recording this, but not learned enough about what made that song so worthwhile – There’s not enough worth remembering in this song beyond the particularly ELO-influenced sections, as if the Hoosiers could only make the catchiness work when they weren’t thieving the life out’ve Jeff Lynne’s most-well-known song.

Somehow, I’ve ended up having a deeper appreciation of ELO as a result of revisiting this song. I have no idea if that’s a good thing or not.