songs for broken hearts, no. 51

I’m not a big ELO guy, which might seem strange since Jeff Lynne is so good at making melodic pop. Sure, I can still play ELO’s Greatest Hits on my iPod and enjoy songs like Do Ya, Living Thing, Telephone Line, Mr. Blue Sky, and even the disco stylings of Turn to Stone. I used to get really excited when I was eight and Living Thing would come on the radio. The song’s amazing strings and vocals give it a lush, dreamy sound that would really send my imagination soaring. But somehow ELO never made it into my personal pantheon of greatness. Part of it might be that they seemed so wimpy and I became aware of them at a time when I wanted my music to have muscle. There was a period of my life when I preferred rock to pop, the opposite of the way I feel today most of the time, and in spite of the occasional crunchy guitar riff you get in this or that ELO song, they will never be mistaken for a rock band in anything more than the most generic understanding of the term. The other thing is that I have this vague suspicion that Jeff Lynne is your stereotypically dumb brummie, a kind of idiot savant who just so happens to have a great talent for infectious pop. I don’t know why that bothers me because I love the Beach Boys and nobody will ever mistake Brian Wilson for Isiah Berlin. I don’t need my pop heroes to be conventionally intelligent, so why do I hold it against Jeff Lynne if he's no brighter than my bedroom doorknob? Maybe it's that the songs aren’t that good upon closer inspection. Maybe they’re simply confections that taste good in the moment but don’t have enough heft to inspire lasting emotional attachments. I mean, do you know anybody who’s absolutely fanatical about ELO? …Come to think of it, one of my best friends is just such a fanatic, so it's probably just one of those subjective things where some do and some don’t… The ELO record that interests me most at the moment is their first album, primarily because of the involvement of Roy Wood and the band’s brief crossover with the Move. Tonight’s song has a big sound and some very satisfying arpeggiated guitar playing. And no matter who you are and what you do, playing arpeggiated chords is, generally speaking, the fastest way to win my heart...