To celebrate the Electric Light Orchestra’s 40th anniversary, Jeff Lynne has revisited and, in part, re-recorded some of their back catalogue for Mr. Blue Sky – The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra, out on October 8 via Frontiers Records.
As well as their classics, the album will also feature a never-before-heard bonus track, ‘The Point Of No Return’. We’ve got the exclusive premiere of the new animated video for ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ below, featuring harmonising clouds, marching choirs of forget-me-nots and Lynne’s Technicolor Dreambeard – have a watch below:
Here’s the tracklisting:
- ‘Mr. Blue Sky’
- ‘Evil Woman’
- ‘Strange Magic’
- ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’
- ‘Turn To Stone’
- ‘Showdown’
- ‘Telephone Line’
- ‘Livin’ Thing’
- ‘Do Ya’
- ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’
- ‘10538 Overture’
- ‘The Point Of No Return’
Lynne is also releasing a new solo album, Long Wave, on the same day, featuring his versions of the songs he listened to as a child.
He says: “I call this new album Long Wave because all of the songs I sing on it are the ones heard on long wave radio when I was a kid growing up in Birmingham, England. These songs take me back to that feeling of freedom in those days and summon up the feeling of first hearing those powerful waves of music coming in on my old crystal set. My dad also had the radio on all the time, so some of these songs have been stuck in my head for 50 years. You can only imagine how great it felt to finally get them out of my head after all these years.”
Have a look at the tracklisting below:
- ‘She’
- ‘If I Loved You’
- ‘So Sad’
- ‘Mercy, Mercy’
- ‘Running Scared’
- ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’
- ‘Smile’
- ‘At Last’
- ‘Love Is A Many Splendored Thing’
- ‘Let It Rock’
- ‘Beyond The Sea’
The two LPs will be followed by further ELO/Lynne releases next year, including a live album, ELO Live!, a reissues of their 2001 album Zoom and Lynne’s first solo album, Armchair Theatre.
