Sun is shinin' in the sky - there ain't a cloud in sight

Continuing my trip back through the 1977 album charts.

11/12/77 : Out Of The Blue - Electric Light Orchestra

Our second visit with ELO - last time I found the whole thing to be very bland, but I believe this is pretty much peak ELO so I'm expecting it to be interesting, if not really my kind of thing.

Well, a lot of this is more Queen-like than the Queen album we previous met - I can assure you there was no reaction to punk happening on this album.  It's obviously prog based, but probably not as prog as I was expecting - it's surprisingly disco in places.  I'd forgotten I quite like "Sweet Talkin' Woman" and surely everyone likes "Mr. Blue Sky", although I was surprised I had to wait until the end of side three to hear it though.  All in all, I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting - I'm not sure I'd need to listen to all 70 minutes of it again, but there are certainly some interesting noises on there.  It's of its time, but it hasn't really dated because it's not like everyone else was making these kind of noises then (or at any time since).

We're at #9 this week on their sixth week of a surprisingly lengthy 105 week run, with it peaking at #4 in its third week.  The top five this week were the Disco Fever compilation, best-ofs from Bread and Gladys Knight, the Feelings compilation and Rod Stewart (the first "proper" album we've had in the top five this year) and the highest new entry was Tammy Wynette's 20 Country Classics (#17).  The next highest new entry is Bing Crosby's Seasons (#25), which is also worth mentioning because it was his final album, recorded at the age of 74 just before he died in October this year.

Wikipedia tells us this is their seventh studio album and Jeff Lynne wrote the whole thing in 3.5 weeks hiding in a chalet in the Swiss Alps.  We then have a massive breakdown of the album song-by-song - according to Wikipedia "this section needs expansion" (spoiler alert - it really doesn't).  Critical reception was nice enough at the time and has improved with age and it did well commercially globally, getting to #4 in the US and #2 in Canada and Sweden.

"Customers also listened to" 10CC, Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac and George Harrison - some fine 70s sounds there.  And I'm not sure you can get much 70ser than ELO, but I actually quite liked this - so far 1977 has been full of pleasant surprises (and considerably more enjoyable than 1990, which I really wasn't expecting).

04/12/77 - Not great
18/12/77 - An interesting mess

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