ELO: A New World Record Vinyl LP

Why you'll love it

This Epic/Legacy edition brings back the album that made ELO global stars. It sold about five million copies in its first year and gave the band their first UK top ten album.

About the album

Jeff Lynne spent ELO's early years trying to marry rock and roll to a string section, and on A New World Record the match finally took. Recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich, with strings and choir added at De Lane Lea in Wembley and final fixes at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles, it arrived in October 1976 and went multi-platinum on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Telephone Line" became a transatlantic top ten hit, "Rockaria!" crashes opera into rock and roll and made the UK top ten, and "Livin' Thing" is pure sunshine with a violin hook. "Do Ya" reworks a song from Lynne's days in The Move, "Tightrope" opens the record in a swirl of orchestra, and "Mission (A World Record)" and "Shangri-La" show how far his ear for a lush hook had come, with "So Fine" and "Above The Clouds" filling out side two.

It set up the even bigger run that followed, and these songs have barely left the radio since. Fifty years on, "Telephone Line" remains the most patient phone call in pop; some of our staff could learn from it.

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