A New World Record (studio album)
by Electric Light Orchestra

ELO had a unique style of being a cross pollination of pop and prog. Some great tracks on this. Some vocals having a John Lennon-esque sound to them

Great record

I didn't expect, but I really like that record. This band sounds like fusion of Queen and The Beatles and I find it beautiful. Tracks have this space theme and opera atmosphere. Highlights for me are Tightrope, Rockaria and Shangri-La.

From Jboy56 01/03/2022 12:13 | #278465

I like NWR more than Out of the Blue. 3 hits (Telephone Line, Living Thing, Thigtrooe)
many other good songs like Rockaria and So Fine..

From buzzdainer 04/25/2021 15:58 | #268964

Electric Light Orchestra's frontman Jeff Lynne is a musician's musican, in the sense that he always seems to appear in celebrity all-star lineups of musicians, including his involvement in supergroup the Traveling Wilburys in the 1980s. This has probably had a mixed effect on people's impressions of ELO: simultaneously attracting new listeners to his back catalog and causing his work to be overshadowed in comparison to collaborators such as Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty. A New World Record is clear evidence that ELO deserves consideration in the same conversation with those other giants. It's an incredibly expansive, ambitious piece of work, with soaring orchestral arrangements blending with driving guitar-driven rock. "Telephone Line" is rightly the song most people know here, but sibling singles "Do Ya" and "Living Thing" are fantastic, too.

Telephone line !!! its longing and melancholic yearning, along with living thing are simply irresistible and fabulous. Their best record for me. Add in tightrope and so fine and your onto a perfect pop record, only let down by the mission in my view.

The last (and the best!) E.L.O. album to really feel like a rock record. I don't dislike synth Jeff Lynne at all, but there's a big difference between the guitar led, short and tight tracklist of this album and the poppier albums that would follow. Ironically enough, one of the big hits here is Telephone Line, a song that uses all kind of synthetic musical gimmicks to do something entirely new, and it completely works.

ELO is so underrated man

Containing as it does a curiously redundant version of the Move gem "Do Ya" (which Jeff Lynne wrote four years ago) along with a package of songs that rather reechoes ELO's material from the last couple of years, the cynic might regard A New World Record as the work of a creative person (Lynne) in the process of stealing from himself. A more generous observer (myself for instance) might view this gentle treading of the creative waters as merely temporary—the workings of a band, now peaking in popularity, that is attempting to supply audiences with exactly the sound they want to hear. Whatever your personal disposition, if you liked Face the Music and Eldorado, you'll like this one just as much. Lynne has always been rather deft with the melodic hook, and both "Livin' Thing" and "So Fine" are irresistible additions to his list of catchiest tunes. Numbers like "Mission (A World Record)" and "Shangri-la" continue the history of classy orchestral stylings that really rock, and Lynne's dominant vocals are as effectively foggy as ever. As expected, the production is lavish and the musicianship more than adequate to fulfill Lynne's Procol Harum-ish visions. By Christmas, A New World Record should be a staple in a million homes. (RS 228)

ALAN NIESTER

(Posted: Dec 16, 1976)

"Eat your diploma, Eric Carmen--after years of floundering, they've gone all the way and made a Moody Blues album with brains, hooks, and laffs galore. My fave is "Rockaria!," about a lass who "loves the way Puccini lays down a tune." Granted, I initially thought it was strictly for those who got off on music appreciation in high school, like the lass. But now I think it's also for those who hated it, like me. B+" - Robert's Christgau's Consumer Guide