Ranking the 5 Best Album-Openers by ELO

Considering Jeff Lynne has announced his current tour under the Electric Light Orchestra banner will be his last, we can also assume there might not be any more albums by the band. While that would be a shame, we can’t really quibble much with the excellence their catalog contains.

Videos by American Songwriter

That includes several songs that acted as perfect leadoff tracks for the band’s various albums. Here are our choices for the top five ELO album-openers. (One note: We counted the brief intros of albums like Eldorado and Time as opening songs, which means no “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” or “Twilight” on the list.)

5. “Shine a Little Love” from Discovery (1979)

Many folks have noted you can’t spell Discovery without disco. Jeff Lynne definitely had his ears open to the sounds of the day when crafting the record, as other album songs like “Last Train to London” make very clear. “Shine a Little Love” doesn’t sound all that far off from something the Bee Gees might have delivered around that time. But Lynne and company distinguish themselves a little bit from that scene with touches like the space-age bells and whistles percolating in the margins and the galloping interconnecting sections.

4. “Heaven Only Knows” from Balance of Power (1986)

You won’t get too much consensus among ELO fans about Balance of Power, the last album before Lynne scuttled the band and headed into his Traveling Wilburys, producer-to-the-stars period. Some think it’s devoid of inspiration, while others hear an unheralded winner. We’re in the latter camp, because it’s hard to deny the pop savvy Lynne brings to the table throughout the record. And it starts right off the bat with “Heaven Only Knows,” which whooshes by on a wave of lyrical guitar and lusciously layered vocals.

3. “Fire on High” from Face the Music (1975)

ELO was scoring hit singles with regularity by the time Face the Music rolled around in 1975. But Lynne didn’t yet want to totally let go of some of the avant-garde notions on which the band was formed. “Fire on High” is one of those rock instrumentals that always manages to surprise. The weird, “Revolution 9”-style opening sets a weird tone. It then opens up into some gorgeous weeping guitar before transforming yet again into an acoustic strum-a-thon. It’s the product of both fertile imagination and the musical chops to pull it all off.

2. “10538 Overture” from Electric Light Orchestra (1972)

In the beginning, ELO was supposed to be just a side project for Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood to test out their theories about the melding of rock and classical. Their day jobs were as leaders of The Move, a group that had already scored their share of hits in their native Great Britain before ELO was formed. You can certainly hear some of The Move’s heavy folk in the “10538 Overture,” the very first song on the first ELO album. But the band also sneaks in those “mathematical strings” (as Paul McCartney termed them) and some howling horns. It’s a thrilling construction on the whole.

1. “Turn to Stone” from Out of the Blue (1977)

Jeff Lynne channeled all his lofty artistic ambitions into the 1977 double album Out of the Blue. A project that grand needed to have a song that could set the whole ball rolling in spectacular fashion. Mission accomplished with “Turn to Stone.” It’s clever to have a fade-up to start off the record, and there’s not a moment of this song that feels like it could be cut out without being a detriment to the whole. Highlights include Lynne’s fast-talking a cappella section, fantastic counterpoint vocals, and a relentlessly churning rhythm.

Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images