You got me thinking that I'm wasting my time

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

23/09/79 : Discovery - Electric Light Orchestra

Our third visit with Jeff Lynne et al and the results have been mixed so far with their 1983 offering being surprisingly bland and their 1977 offering being surprisingly enjoyable - maybe this will surprisingly somewhere in between.

Hmmm - it's very ELO, with them also trying out some different stuff like disco or ballads. I guess if you're a fan of theirs, then you're going to be happy with it but it didn't really click with me. I was surprised to recognise "Don't Bring Me Down" because I don't think I ever knew it was them but apparently it's their biggest hit in the US and their second biggest hit - after? Anyone? No, not "Mr Blue Sky", but "Xanadu" which got to #1 in '80. I was also surprised when I was playing this in the car that the lovely Mrs Reed sang along with "The Diary Of Horace Wimp" - I never had her down as a closet ELO fan!

We're at #4 in the charts this week on their sixteenth week of an impressive 45 week run, with it having spend its first FIVE weeks at #1 - wow! The rest of the top five were Boney M (a new entry), Gary Numan, Cliff Richard and Led Zeppelin and the next highest new entry was Sham 69 (#8) - that was their best chance to get a visit from us and they were unlucky not to do so.

WIkipedia tells us this is their eighth album (and it looks like we'll be visiting a few more of them in the coming years) and was their first #1 album. It mentions the heavy disco influence on many of the tracks, noting that the groups keyboardist Richard Tandy nicknamed the album "Disco Very". The critical reception was pretty neutral, except for Smash Hits which gave it 8/10 but commercially it did very well, getting to #1 in Argentina, Australia, Norway and Spain as well as here and #5 in the US.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for a couple of quid but if you want to really splash out you can spend more on this than any other album this year with £370 getting you a gatefold sleeve version along with a rare poster - I think I'll pass, if that's OK with you. I can see this bringing back happy memories for some people but it all sounded a bit of an ELO-themed muddle to me, and it's not really a sound I go for. 

30/09/79 - The best Cliff yet!

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