Jeff Lynne’s nine favourite Electric Light Orchestra songs of all time
When Jeff Lynne began the Electric Light Orchestra alongside Roy Wood and Bev Bevan in 1970, how could he ever have known that almost as soon as they hit the radio, John Lennon would crown them the band who were picking up where The Beatles left off.
The three founding members may have all been active in the Birmingham music scene for several years, but they wanted to do something completely different together when they dreamed up the innovative ELO. They adopted a full-bodied orchestral pop sound for their new project, separating them from their peers and sending them to superstardom.
For the next 13 years, Electric Light Orchestra barely took a moment to rest, which drove them to exhaustion. Throughout their first spell as a band, they were either on the road or in the studio and prolifically released 11 albums, with two of their LPs topping the chart in the United Kingdom. Along the way, they help to orchestrate the new sound of the 1970s.
Although Lynne’s heart was no longer in the band, he was legally required to release one more album with the group, and after a hiatus, the musician was forced to return to the fold to make 1986’s Balance of Power. Shortly afterwards, he accepted George Harrison’s invitation to work on his album Cloud Nine, which led to him co-founding The Travelling Wilburys with the former Beatle. A dream come true and then some.
It was over a decade until Electric Light Orchestra reunited, albeit only with Lynne and Richard Tandy, for the album, Zoom. However, a planned world tour was cancelled due to poor ticket sales, and ELO’s hiatus was resumed. Their star had somewhat slumped despite the sounds of the era being heavily indebted to the sort of expanded pop sound that they pretty much pioneered.
The duo resuscitated ELO again in 2014, and they’ve been wilfully reminiscing about their glory days for the last decade, regaining a huge audience, right up until the moment Lynne was forced to retire for health reasons following a show on July 9th, 2025.
Given this grand journey, Lynne is now happy to reflect on the golden years of the glossy group, and in 2016, he told Rolling Stone about his favourite tracks by the band.
The first track Lynne mentioned as a favourite is his track, ‘Showdown’, which was the lead single from Electric Light Orchestra’s third album, On The Third Day. The frontman said: “I wrote ‘Showdown’ in my mom and dad’s front room in Birmingham. I made the riff up, and I was thrilled with it. I knew it was going to be a hit even after I had just done a few notes of it.”
He added: “When we cut it, the engineer said, ‘This is a classic.’ I was thrilled to bits. It’s one of my favourites, though the lyrics don’t mean anything, really. It’s just a story, a made-up scenario. A lot of people ask me what my songs mean, and I have no idea. It means something different to me every time I sing it.”
Other tracks from the first era of ELO to be included by Lynne were ‘Evil Woman’, ‘Telephone Line’, ‘Turn To Stone’, ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’, ‘All Over The World’, and of course, their signature track, ‘Mr. Blue Sky’. Addressing the latter, Lynne said: “I suppose this is my most well-known song. Everybody tells me something different about it. It’s even got crazy appeal to kids since it’s like a nursery rhyme.” In many ways, that typifies the band’s output.
Lynne continued: “I remember writing the words down. I was at a chalet in the mountains of Switzerland, and it was all misty and cloudy all the way around. I didn’t see any countryside for the first four days or so, and then everything cleared, and there was this enormous view forever, and the sky was blue.”
As he once comically quipped, “I always had too many hits! Too many hit singles… people don’t like that. Writers think there’s gotta be something wrong with you.” By Lynne had the knack, and that makes narrowing his favourites down to nine an almighty task, but we can be glad he did it.
Interestingly, he also gave love to two new creations by the band, which were released under the new name of Jeff Lynne’s ELO. The Birmingham native listed ‘When I Was A Boy’ and ‘Love and Rain’ as his favourites from the group’s latest chapter.
Reflecting upon their reunion, Lynne admitted: “I had all these negative thoughts before agreeing to play Hyde Park last year, but the crowd just went bananas all the way through. They loved every minute of it. It was the best show I’d ever been involved with up until that point.”
It is remarkable to think that ELO is just one strand of Lynne’s output. Outside of the group, he’s worked with the Wilburys, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Brian Wilson, Del Shannon, Billy Joel, Randy Newman, Bonnie Tyler, Dave Edmunds, Joe Walsh… and on and on. Not bad for a working-class lad from Birmingham who wrote his first ELO hit in his parents’ living room.
Listen to a perfect party playlist of his favourite Electric Light Orchestra tracks at the foot of piece.
Jeff Lynne’s favourite Electric Light Orchestra tracks
- Electric Light Orchestra – ‘Showdown’
- Electric Light Orchestra – ‘Evil Woman’
- Electric Light Orchestra – ‘Telephone Line’
- Electric Light Orchestra – ‘Turn to Stone’
- Electric Light Orchestra – ‘Mr. Blue Sky’
- Electric Light Orchestra – ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’
- Electric Light Orchestra – ‘All Over The World’
- Jeff Lynne’s ELO – ‘When I Was A Boy’
- Jeff Lynne’s ELO – ‘Love and Rain’
