“It was a strange one”: The song Jeff Lynne fell back in love with
For anyone who has been playing music their entire lives, there comes a point where the sound of their own voice starts to get annoying. It might be fun going back into the studio to record, but once they fall into a holding pattern, it’s easy to see where things either get too monotonous or songs become chores that everyone has to sit through. While there is probably no shortage of tunes that Jeff Lynne has played more times than he cares to count, he does admit that some deep cuts sound better than the hits.
But when looking at most of ELO’s discography, it’s easy to see where Lynne would have had a problem in the early days. Outside of the massive budget, the band would have needed to bring an entire orchestra on the road, not hearing all the basic parts of ‘Mr Blue Sky’ live was never enough to satisfy Lynne, hence why he has spent the majority of his later career behind the board for other acts.
It’s hard to really blame him, either. Given how rigorous touring could be, trading that in for hanging out with The Beatles day in and day out for the Anthology project would have been any other artist’s dream come true. And since he had endless tracks to work with, he didn’t have to worry about trying to fit every section of a song like ‘Tightrope’ on a live stage anymore.
Still, it’s hard to retire without properly saying goodbye, and Lynne started taking a look back in his later years. Even if he didn’t have plans to retire at the time, hearing tunes like ‘One More Time’ felt like a better way of him bowing out and giving a final wave goodbye to the audience. If he was going out on tour again, he was going to need to pull out all the stops to give the crowd a trip through the stars.
While most could get behind hearing songs like ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’ and ‘Telephone Line’ in a live setting, there were some surprises in the mix as well. Even though no one really expected Lynne to pull out much from the Xanadu soundtrack, the title track was a welcome change of pace from his usual songs, especially after hearing a male’s perspective on the tune after Olivia Newton-John’s original.
Even though there are pieces of Xanadu that are best left forgotten, Lynne remembered falling back in love with the tune when he played it live, saying, “[It] was a strange one because it wasn’t me singing on the record, but I love the tune of it. I really liked the chords, and I liked the construction of the song and we started doing that one. It went down really well always because it was a big hit.”
Then again, the fact that it went over well should be a lesson to anyone who writes tracks behind the scenes. Even if someone like Prince wrote countless songs that became hits for other artists, hearing him break out songs like ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ or ‘Manic Monday’ in a live setting would have been a good way for people to appreciate the songs in a different way as if looking into an alternate timeline where ‘The Purple One’ kept all of his main hits for himself.
Regardless of who sang it, though, ‘Xanadu’ is still a fine piece of power pop that showcases everything that Lynne was great at in his prime. While many people force themselves to become a songwriting machine after years in the industry, Lynne seemed to be one of the few who managed to get even better with age.
