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A New World Record is the sixth studio album by Electric Light Orchestra. It was released in 1976.
[edit] Overview
The second album to be recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich, the LP proved to be the band's long awaited breakthrough in the UK: after seeing their previous three studio recordings fail to chart in their home market, A New World Record became their first top ten album in the UK, The LP became a huge global success and would consolidate the band's position as one of the biggest selling rock bands in the world, reaching multi-platinum status in the US and UK. The cover art features the famous ELO logo, designed by Kosh, for the first time. This logo would be included on several of the group's subsequent releases. The cover also features New York's Empire State Building, which took the world record for tallest building in 1931, but at the time of release, ironically, had just recently lost its title to crosstown skyscraper World Trade Center in 1972 and Chicago's Sears Tower in 1974
The album included the hit singles "Telephone Line," which became the band's first gold US single, "Livin' Thing," and "Do Ya" (US); and "Rockaria!" (UK). The focus is more on shorter pop songs, a trend which would continue throughout the rest of ELO's future albums. In 2006, the album was remastered and released with bonus tracks on Sony's Epic/Legacy imprint. "Surrender" was also issued as a promotional single and an iTunes download single, which entered the top 100 download chart.
The bands frontman Jeff Lynne regards his own songwriting at this point to have reached a new high.
“ |
The songs started to flow and most of them came quickly to me. To have all those hits, it was just ...I mean amazing really. Going from doing okay for probably three or four years to suddenly being in the big time, it was a strange but great thing. |
” |
- – Jeff Lynne 2006; A New World Record remaster
[edit] Chart Positions, Chart Runs
[edit] Track listing
All songs written by Jeff Lynne.
[edit] Side one
[edit] Side two
[edit] Bonus tracks (2006 remaster)
- "Telephone Line" (Alternate vocal) – 4:41
- "Surrender" (previously unreleased) – 2:37
- "Tightrope" (alternate mix) – 4:55
- "Above the Clouds" (Instrumental version) – 1:14
- "So Fine" (Instrumental version) – 4:16
- "Telephone Line" (Instrumental version) – 4:51
[edit] Personnel
- Jeff Lynne - vocals, lead, rhythm and slide guitars, percussion, piano
- Bev Bevan - drums, Minimoog drum, percussion, vocals
- Richard Tandy - piano, Minimoog, Micromoog, polyphonic keyboard, electric guitars, clavinet, grand piano, Mellotron, percussion, vocals
- Kelly Groucutt - vocals, bass, percussion, backing vocals
- Mik Kaminski - violin
- Hugh McDowell - cello
- Melvyn Gale - cello
- Mary Thomas - operatic vocals
- Patti Quatro - uncredited vocals
- Orchestra and choral arrangements - Jeff Lynne, Richard Tandy and Louis Clark.
- Orchestra conducted by Louis Clark.
[edit] External links