Best ELO songs of all time: Electric Light Orchestra's 30 greatest moments

Electric Light Orchestra began with the premise of following through on what the Beatles had accomplished bringing classical arrangements to a rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic while seeing how much further they could take it.

And they got off to a brilliant start with the richly textured psychedelic splendor of a 1972 debut single titled “10538 Overture.”

Before the year was out, Roy Wood had left to form a new group, Wizzard, leaving fellow founding member Jeff Lynne at the helm to carry on the mission, which Lynne did remarkably well. So much so that, years later, the Guardian headlined an article "ELO: The band the Beatles could have been."

By that point, Lynne had been a member of the Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and an actual Beatle, guitarist George Harrison, and co-produced two singles built on demos by the late John Lennon as part of the “Beatles Anthology” project.

He’d also led ELO through a dizzying stream of timeless singles, from “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” through “Livin’ Thing” and “Mr. Blue Sky” to “Xanadu” and “Hold on Tight” while expanding the scope of their sound, embracing new ideas while retaining the unerring pop sensibilities that define their legacy.

With Jeff Lynne’s ELO revisiting so many of their greatest hits on the Over and Out Tour , which makes its way to downtown Phoenix on Monday, Oct. 21 , for a stop at Footprint Center, here’s one longtime fan and critic’s countdown of their 30 best songs.

It’s a livin’ thing.

30. 'Calling America' (1986)

This was their final hit, the lead single from “Balance of Power,” after which they pumped the brakes and didn’t make another album until “Zoom,” which featured guest appearances by former Beatle Ringo Starr and Nelson Wilbury of the Traveling Wilburys, in 2001. It peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100, 10 spots lower on the U.K. pop chart. He’s been calling America because “somebody told her that there was a place like heaven across the water on a 747” but he can’t get through because “we’re living in a modern world” and “talk is cheap on satellite.” That modern world is reflected in the electronic touches while the chugging guitar and doo-wop flavor of the backing vocals keep it rooted in the rock ‘n’ roll side of the ELO aesthetic.

29. 'When I Was a Boy' (2015)

This Lennon-esque piano ballad is the only song by Jeff Lynne’s ELO on this list. I realize there are those among us who would argue that it isn’t even technically an ELO song. Fair enough. If that’s the way you feel about, “Ma-Ma-Ma Belle” is now your No. 30 and "Calling America" moves up a spot. I went with this because it’s such a beautiful reflection on the impact music had on making Lynne the kind of boy who dreams of growing up to be the kind of man who made the other classic records on this list — and your list, too — “in those beautiful days when there was no money.”

28. 'Rock ‘N’ Roll King' (1983)

And this is exactly the sort of song that would’ve captured his imagination as a boy when those “radio waves” he sings about in “When I Was a Boy” were piping dreams into his bedroom in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll. It may not be his most successful tribute to the music of the rockabilly era. “Hold on Tight” had given ELO a Top 10 hit on both sides of the pond just two years earlier. But this one tops the rockabilly essence of the music with a lyrical tribute to the music of his youth, complete with the beyond contagious chorus hook of “She said, "Whamalamabamalama, rock 'n' roll is king." The biggest single of the underrated “Secret Messages,” it peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 13 on the U.K. pop charts.

27. 'Confusion' (1979)

Lynne’s fascination with the vocoder, a means of synthesizing human voices in a way that sounds like robots singing, had already played a huge role on “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” and “Mr. Blue Sky,” two of three career-defining singles on “Out of the Blue,” by the time they hit the studio to cut this highlight of the followup, “Discovery.” That’s the vocoder singing “confusion.” But that synth line is an even more infectious pop hook. In the liner notes to the “Discovery” reissue, Lynne explained, ”I'd just got hold of the very latest synthesizer, the Yamaha CS-80. The song is based entirely on the sound it made.” Released as a double A-side with “Last Train to London” in the U.K., it peaked at No. 8, the fourth consecutive “Discovery” single to go Top 10 on that chart.

26. 'Ticket to the Moon' (1981)

Released in 1981, this melancholy ballad finds Lynne pining for “the good old 1980s, when things were so uncomplicated.” Now, he’s got a ticket to the moon and feeling disconnected from the love he has to leave behind. “I'll be rising high above the Earth so soon,” he tells her. “And the tears I cry might turn into the rain that gently falls upon your window.” A highlight of the futuristic concept album “Time,” it’s blessed with one of Lynne’s best vocals, initially backed by a classical-sounding piano arpeggio and introducing haunting strings along the way to a suitably stirring crescendo, where Lynne reveals the damnedest thing about that ticket. It’s just one-way. Released as a double A-side with “Here is the News,” it peaked at U.K. No. 24.

25. 'Eldorado' (1974)

The title track to “Eldorado” is a richly orchestrated ballad that brings the concept album’s narrative to a dramatic close as Lynne awakens from his dream world where “the painted ladies of the Avalon play in the sun” to “another lonely day” on Earth, decides he likes his dream world better and vows to find a way to be “free of the world” and "find the key to the eternal dream in Eldorado.” ELO’s fourth album, “Eldorado” marked the first time he brought in an actual orchestra to realize his vision rather than rely on bandmates to supply those string parts. I have no idea what he paid that orchestra, but they earned every penny. Does it flirt with bombast? Sure. But in a good way.

24. 'The Diary of Horace Wimp' (1979)

If someone wanted to accuse the man of having taken his vocoder obsession to ridiculous extremes on this Beatles-esque pop song, who am I to disagree? But hear me out. I think it adds to the charm of a record I’ve long considered their quirkiest triumph. And this one is blessed with a happier ending than most of the songs on this list as our put-upon hero turns his life around in the course of a single week that begins with him worried he’ll be fired and ends with him happily married to a wife he met on Wednesday, a day after “feeling so sad” because “he’d never had a girl.” So why not have a little goofy fun with it? This one peaked at U.K. No. 8.

23. 'Hold on Tight' (1981)

Their most successful foray into rockabilly waters begins with a low-end twang fit for an old Duane Eddy record and ends with a raucous guitar break that a young Chuck Berry might have played in that same spot, with plenty of Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano for good measure. And yet, it fits right in on “Time,” an album packed with more contemporary electronic touches, taking the essence of the 1950s and bringing it back to the future. Meanwhile, Lynne urges listeners to “hold on tight to your dream” when “you get so down that you can’t get up,” as he sings on the bridge before switching to French for a chorus. Fun fact: Lynne has said those lyrics were translated a day before the session by a French nanny. This one topped the charts in Spain and Switzerland, peaked U.K. No 4 and No. 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

22. 'All Over World' (1980)

I have yet to see the film, but “Xanadu” placed two songs on my countdown; the one with Olivia Newton-John and this euphoric promise of “a party all over the world,” complete with Kelly Groucutt playing disco bass ― hey, it was 1980 — and a joyous chorus hook delivered in falsetto. It’s certainly one of their happier songs.  And the hooks just keep coming, from those harmonies coming out of the chorus to an instrumental break with handclaps and the title line run through a vocoder. There’s not much to the lyrics, but they get the job done, conveying a spirit of joy and optimism. This one hit No. 11 in the U.K., No. 13 on the Hot 100.

21. 'Waterfall' (1975)

This bittersweet ballad is beautifully sung by Lynne, who slips into his upper register to breathtaking effect to end the chorus on “Without the friends and lovers, you could never go on living.” It also features echoes of another future Wilbury on slide guitar and orchestration that could scarcely be more Beatles-esque. In the liner notes to a reissue of its parent album, “Face the Music,” Lynne called this “a bit of a favorite of mine." And who can blame him?

20. 'Xanadu' (1980)

Even a voice as distinct as Olivia Newton-John’s on lead vocals can’t mask the identity of the man behind the curtain here. The sound is pure ELO of a 1980 vintage. Lynne wrote and produced this slice of pop perfection and answers Newton-John’s lead vocal with distinctly ELO-style backing vocals on the chorus. He also brought in ELO to cut the backing track. This is not to detract from the magic Newton-John brings to making this starry-eyed ode to a mythical paradise known as Xanadu shine like a diamond. In the movie of the same name, Xanadu is the name of a roller disco. This one topped the charts in several European countries and became the only song to top the U.K. charts for ELO while hitting No. 8 here in the States.

19. 'Rockaria!' (1976)

ELO had had fun with their classical leanings prior to “Rockaria!,” interpolating Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in a radio-friendly mash-up with Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.” But this is such a better record. For one, it rocks with more abandon. And it’s funnier. After singing the praises of a “sweet little lady” who “sings the opera like you ain’t never heard,” Lynne briefly channels Little Richard en route to the chorus, where Bev Bevan rocks a surf beat as Lynne reveals more details on that little lady. “She's sweet on Wagner,” he sings. “I think she'd die for Beethoven/ She loves the way Puccini lays down a tune/ And Verdi's always creeping from her room.” Then it cuts to operatic Welsh soprano Mary Thomas, first heard on the intro, singing in German. It ends with everybody “rockin' at the opera house until the break of light” and the orchestra “playin' all Chuck Berry's greatest tunes” as people crowd in just to see the opera singer “singing rock ‘n’ roll so pure.” My favorite line comes next: “I thought I saw the mayor there but I wasn't really sure.” This one peaked at U.K. No. 9.

18. 'Tightrope' (1976)

The opening track on “A New World Record” fades in as the sound of otherworldly synthesizers gives way to a dramatic string arrangement topped by operatic vocals before shifting gears into an upbeat Chuck Berry-style rocker with strings, which continue to play a prominent role throughout, as do those operatic vocals. Lyrically, Lynne sets the tone on a pessimistic note with “They say some days, you're gonna win/ They say some days, you're gonna lose/ I tell you, I got news for you/ You're losing all the time/ You'll never win.” By the end of the song, he’s drowning, pleading “Won’t somebody throw me down a line?” It has a happy ending, though. “When I closed my eyes, I was so surprised,” Lynne tells us on the final chorus. “Somebody had thrown me down the line, stopped me drowning.”

17. 'Shine a Little Love' (1979)

The opening track on “Discovery” was a Top 10 hit on both sides of the pond (No. 6 in the U.K., No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100). It may have helped that “Shine a Little Love” is one of ELO’s more disco-flavored tracks, from the bassline to the string part to those shouts of “Ooh!” It’s also one of their more upbeat tracks, which suits the lovestruck nature of the lyrics. As Lynne wrote in the liner notes to the “Discovery” reissue, "A bit of a disco beat on this one, and quite a lot of things going on, forty-piece string section and all. It's very jolly and bouncy and I must have been in a very good mood when I wrote it!”

16. 'Shangri-La' (1976)

What’s not to love about a song whose chorus opens with “My Shangri-La has gone away, fading like the Beatles on ‘Hey Jude’?” The man is at his melancholy best here, from the weeping slide guitar that ushers in the track to his wounded delivery as he sets the tone with “Sitting here, waiting for/ Someone calling at my door/ Too bad, I'm getting out of love.” This aching ballad brought “A New World Record” to a resounding, richly orchestrated close, Lynne promising “I will return to Shangri-La” as the song fades, as it has to, like the Beatles on “Hey Jude.”

15. 'Last Train to London' (1979)

Another disco-flavored gem from the “Discovery” album, this one puts the disco bassline front and center (a combination of actual bass and clavinet) with Lynne slipping into his sweetest soul falsetto on the back half of the chorus, where he’s just missed the last train to London on purpose because he saw her standing there and now “I really want tonight to last forever/ I really wanna be with you/ Let the music play on down the line tonight.” Released as a double A-side with “Confusion” in the U.K., this one peaked at U.K. No. 8 but stalled at No. 39 here in the States, where those two songs were issued separately.

14. 'Kuiama' (1973)

I wouldn’t hesitate to place this highlight of their second album on a shortlist of the greatest rock songs ever written on the human cost of war, right up there with the Kinks’ “Some Mother’s Son.” An 11-minute album-ending epic, complete with richly orchestrated instrumental passages, “Kuiama” tells the story of an orphan whose parents were killed in the war, and a soldier doing what he can to comfort her, gradually filling in more details on the way to a reveal so dark and harrowing, it feels as poignant – and as shocking – today as it did when I first realized what was going on. That was decades and dozens and dozens of listens ago. A masterpiece of storytelling, this one doesn’t waste a second of that daunting run time.

13. 'Turn to Stone' (1977)

This served as the opening track and lead single for “Out of the Blue,” the double album that built on the momentum of having followed “Face the Music” with “A New World Record.” A perfect introduction to the album, its effervescent pop hooks belie the melancholy nature of the lyrics to brilliant effect, Lynne turning to stone as he sits at home waiting, praying that “you will return again someday to my blue world.” There’s even a bit of silliness in the midst of all that pining where he filters some really fast vocals through a vocoder. As Lynne told Rolling Stone years later, “I often used to put a funny little piece in a song just in case I get bored with it. I’d go, ‘Well, maybe this is going on too long. I’ll think of something daft to put in there.'” This one peaked at U.K. No. 18 and hit No. 13 on the Hot 100.

12. 'Showdown' (1973)

A standalone single in the U.K., where it peaked at No. 12, becoming their third U.K. hit, this song was added to the U.S. pressing of third album “On the Third Day.” It represents a clear departure from their earlier recordings, taking their sound in a funkier direction, complete with clavinet. Lynne, who slips in and out of falsetto in all the right places, has said this is one of his favorite ELO songs. John Lennon famously played it on the radio in New York City, where he called it “a beautiful combination” of Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ and Lou Christie’s ‘Lightnin’ Strikes,’ “with a little ‘Walrus’ underneath.” I’m not sure I hear the “Walrus” in there, but the string part is essentially the melody to "Grapevine" (where Gaye sings "Bet you wonder how I knew").

11. 'One Summer Dream' (1975)

In the liner notes to the “Flashback” box set, Lynne calls this bittersweet ballad “a kind of protest song.” I’m not sure what it’s protesting exactly, but what’s nice about the lyrics is they’re open to interpretation, purposefully vague and poetic, from the opening verse (“Deep waters flow out to the sea, they never needed you or me”) to “Bird on a wing goes floating by, but there's a teardrop in his eye.” The music is suitably dreamy, from the wistful orchestration of the intro to Lynne’s emotional delivery of those lyrics, bringing “Face the Music” to a haunting close.

10. '10538 Overture' (1971)

This is where it all began, a song Lynne wrote and demoed in the hope that it would be recorded by The Move, a group he’d joined in 1969 led by Roy Wood that also featured Bev Bevan on drums. Lynne was inspired to write the song by Wood’s idea for a project that would pick up where the Beatles left off, merging rock and classical arrangements. It opens on a haunting psychedelic riff the Beatles would, indeed, be proud to call their own, double-tracked on distorted guitars. Then the “orchestra” joins in — Bill Hunt on French horn and hunting horn, Steve Woolan on violin and Wood sawing on multiple cellos while also playing everything from clarinet and oboe to bassoon – as the lyrics tell the tale of a prison escape. “Did you see that man running through the streets today? Did you catch his face? Was it 10538?” Wood later described the sound as a real heavy metal orchestra, which isn’t far off. Rather than release it as a B-side by The Move, as initially planned, they used it to launch a new project, Electric Light Orchestra. It peaked at U.K. No. 9, the perfect number for a song that means to pick up where the Beatles left off.

9. 'Don’t Bring Me Down' (1979)

That beat is irresistible, which may be why Lynne chose to start with just the drums, which are, amazingly enough, a slowed-down tape loop of a drum track Bevan had recorded earlier in the “Discovery” sessions for a song called “On the Run.” Lynne wrote the song around that tape loop. In the liner notes to the “Discovery” reissue, Lynne wrote, “It's a great big galloping ball of distortion. I wrote it at the last minute, 'cause I felt there weren't enough loud ones on the album. This was just what I was after.” As it turns out, it was also just what radio was after, giving ELO their highest-charting entry on the Hot 100 (No. 4) while going one notch higher in the U.K. It also marked another clear departure as their sound continued to evolve. It’s their first single with no strings. And it features something daft, as Lynne was wont to do, rolling his r’s on the nonsense word “Grrrrroose,” which people tend to hear as “Brrrrruce.”

8. 'Do Ya' (1976)

This was a B-side for The Move that Lynne decided to revisit with the new band on “A New World Record,” having added the song to their live set. The two arrangements start off sounding fairly similar, swaggering in on a primal guitar riff for the ages. But the ELO recording is more fully realized, with the lush orchestration and harmonies that had become their stock in trade. And from the sound of it, Christopher Walken may have been in the studio demanding more cowbell when The Move recorded it. “Do Ya” was the only Move release to crack the Hot 100, losing steam at No. 93. The ELO recording did much better, hitting No. 24. Both versions rock, but with that riff, how could you not? “Do Ya” also features some of Lynne’s best, most imaginative lyrics. “I've seen old men crying at their own grave sides and I've seen pigs all sitting watching picture slides,” he sings. “But I never seen nothing like you.”

7. 'Sweet Talkin’ Woman' (1977)

This disco-flavored pop gem opens on a string part that would not have sounded out of place on “Face the Music” before a vocodorized “Sweet talkin’ woman” is followed by Lynne asking “Where did you go?” in his sweetest falsetto. It’s like a snapshot of the band they were at that exact point, straddling their past and future sounds with just a hint of doo-wop in the backing vocals as they move from one infectious pop hook to another. The call-and-response between Lynne and the backing vocals would’ve gotten two thumbs up from Berry Gordy Jr. in the Golden Age of Motown and “I was waiting for the operator on the line” is a well-played callback to “Telephone Line.” It peaked at U.K. No. 6 while hitting No. 17 here in the States.

6. 'Strange Magic' (1975)

This ballad is as strangely magical as promised, a wistful blend of dream-state orchestration and gently weeping guitar (supplied by keyboard player Richard Tandy). The breathtaking melody makes the most of Lynne’s elastic upper register, the results every bit as enchanting as the woman Lynne has “walking meadows in my mind” and “making waves across my time.” The second hit from “Face the Music,” this one peaked at U.K. No. 38 and No. 14 in the States.

5. 'Can’t Get It Out of My Head' (1974)

They weren’t exactly unknown in the States before this “Eldorado” highlight crashed the Top 10, hitting No. 9. But the closest they’d come to connecting with a U.S. audience prior to “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” was losing steam at No. 42 with “Roll Over Beethoven.” And it’s easy to see what made it resonate. It’s just the sort of melancholy ballad Lynne has always done so well, from the Beatles-esque string arrangement to the pathos of lyrics that don't require you to understand the concept of the “Eldorado” album to relate to what he’s singing. Take this highlight of the second verse: “Bank job in the city/ Robin Hood and William Tell, Ivanhoe and Lancelot/ They don't envy me, yeah.” I hear you. In an appearance on “VH1 Storytellers,” Lynne explained that he wrote it about “a guy in a dream who sees this vision of loveliness and wakes up and finds that he’s actually a clerk working in a bank. And he hasn’t got any chance of getting her or doing all these wonderful things that he thought he was going to do.”

4. 'Evil Woman' (1975)

This is the single Lynne came up with late in the recording process for the “Face the Music” album when he didn’t think he heard a hit. As Lynne told Rolling Stone in 2016, it took a matter of minutes to come up with “Evil Woman.” “I sent the band out to a game of football and made up ‘Evil Woman’ on the spot,” he recalled. “The first three chords came right to me. It was the quickest thing I’d ever done.” It takes the funkier direction they’d explored on “Showdown” to its logical conclusion, led by Richard Tandy on piano with a truly brilliant string arrangement and soulful backing vocals underscoring the tale of the evil woman who made a fool of Lynne, as he sings on the dramatic intro. And that That’s all it took to give the band a timeless hit that peaked at No. 10 in both the U.K. and the U.S.

3. 'Telephone Line' (1976)

Again with the pathos. In his finest hour as a melancholy balladeer, Lynne tries in vain to get her on the phone, setting the scene with an utterly forlorn delivery of “Hello, how are you? Have you been alright through all those lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely nights?” And here’s the catch. “That's what I'd say/ I'd tell you everything/ If you'd pick up that telephone.” She never does pick up that telephone, nor would you want her to. That would just ruin the song, which as it stands is perfect, from the sound of a ringing telephone on the intro (which Lynne achieved by calling America and duplicating the dial tone on the oscillator of a Moog synthesizer) to the way his voice on the opening verse sounds like it’s coming through a telephone. The string arrangement reinforces every hook along the way. And the “doo-wop, doo-be-doo-doo-wop, doo-wah, doo-lang” heading into the heartbroken chorus is a beautiful stroke of daft genius. The fourth and final single from “A New World Record,” it topped the charts in New Zealand and Canada, hitting U.K. No. 8 and No. 7 on the Hot 100 (at the time their highest-charting U.S. hit).

2. 'Mr. Blue Sky' (1977)

“Mr. Blue Sky” begins with a weatherman saying “Good morning. Today’s forecast calls for blue skies.” Cut to the jaunty piano, whose similarities to the bridge of “A Day in the Life” are further underscored by a Ringo-esque drum fill and a bit of heavy panting. It’s perhaps their most contagious and their most audacious pop song, completely with a vocoder solo, opera singing and someone banging a fire extinguisher to the beat. The upbeat vibe came naturally to Lynne. He’d booked a Swiss chalet to work on new material to follow “A New World Record” and was struggling with writer’s block while feeling down because the cloudy skies were obscuring his view of the Alps. As he told BBC Radio, “It was dark and misty for two weeks, and I didn't come up with a thing. Suddenly the sun shone and it was, 'Wow, look at those beautiful Alps.' I wrote ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ and 13 other songs in the next two weeks.” Although the single peaked at U.K. No. 6, it only got to No. 34 here in the States, but “Mr. Blue Sky” has gone on to be their most enduring triumph, with more than 1 billion Spotify streams, nearly three times as many as their second-most-streamed song. It’s worth noting that “Here Comes the Sun” is the only Beatles song that's passed 1 billion streams on Spotify. Apparently people need a little sunshine in their life.

1. 'Livin’ Thing' (1976)

This was supposed to be a song about a holiday in Spain. But when Lynne came back to the studio and listened to the playback a day after tracking his vocal, he decided he hated those lyrics, wiped them off the track and spent a half an hour coming up with words that fit the vibe so perfectly, it’s hard to imagine it could ever have had different lyrics. It’s a livin’ thing, which, to be clear, is love, from the magic of “sailin’ away on the crest of a wave” to the sadness of “So let her go, don't start spoiling the show, it’s a bad dream.” It’s a terrible thing to lose, as they say. It’s a brilliant arrangement, drawing you in with Mik Kaminski’s mournful violin with a flourish to lift the chorus in response to “It’s a Livin’ Thing.” This flawless record strikes the perfect balance of undeniable pop sensibilities and richly orchestrated classical arrangements. The first single released from “A New World Record,” it peaked at U.K. 4 (which, at the time, was a career high), hitting No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Ed has covered pop music for The Republic since 2007, reviewing festivals and concerts, interviewing legends, covering the local scene and more. He did the same in Pittsburgh for more than a decade. Follow him on X and Instagram @edmasley and on Facebook as Ed Masley. Email him at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Best ELO songs of all time: Electric Light Orchestra's 30 greatest moments