{"id":7147,"date":"2011-05-16T23:12:44","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T03:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=7147"},"modified":"2011-05-16T23:29:33","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T03:29:33","slug":"what%e2%80%99s-your-favorite-elo-lyric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/what%e2%80%99s-your-favorite-elo-lyric\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Your Favorite ELO Lyric?"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/28_unHqjVp0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><em>What&#8217;s your favorite ELO lyric?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s funny how lyrics operate within the context of studio-recorded pop music. I&#8217;ve been listening to my favorite 10 or so <strong>ELO<\/strong> songs on my\u00a0iPod\u00a0lately, and while marveling at how good <strong>Jeff Lynne<\/strong>&#8216;s voice could be the rare times he let it be heard\u00a0without obstruction by the aural shades that\u00a0were\u00a0layers of\u00a0multi-tracking and studio effects I also began to marvel at how much emotion his music could inspire despite the fact that there&#8217;s hardly an ELO lyric that, taken at word value alone, means a damn to me.<\/p>\n<p>I first began to think about this while enjoying maybe my third-favorite ELO song, &#8220;Strange Magic.&#8221; I&#8217;ve\u00a0loved this song since middle school, but I can&#8217;t even tell what he&#8217;s singing\u00a0in the chorus after\u00a0he sings the title. From what I can make out in the verses, which\u00a0seem to race by in time\u00a0to enjoy\u00a0the next\u00a0musical variation on the chorus&#8217; arrangement, I&#8217;m not missing much, but because Lynne so artfully buries his lack of lyrical content sacrificing his pleasing vocal timbre in the process, it never matters for me.\u00a0It&#8217;s probably best\u00a0that I fail to pay attention to his lyrics. Beside, it&#8217;s magic; why should I try to make sense of it?<\/p>\n<p>Whenever <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RFn-AB7l2Hw\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Telephone Line&#8221;<\/a> comes on I can actually follow along with the lyrics and get something directly out of them. It&#8217;s no surprise that this is one of the few songs on which Lynne avoids overdoing the effects on his voice. He knows he&#8217;s got a direct sentiment to express. Beside that song, though\u2014only a few days after listening to these songs and thinking about this stuff\u2014I can barely think of a couplet in a verse in an ELO song that I give a damn about removed from the music! Other than &#8220;You&#8217;ve made a fool of me,&#8221; in the beginning of &#8220;Evil Woman,&#8221; I&#8217;d have to think long and hard about a line outside the chorus in any song by them, let alone one that means anything to me.<\/p>\n<p>How about you? <em>Do you have a favorite ELO <strong>lyric<\/strong>, even as small as a couplet or ad-libbed aside?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s your favorite ELO lyric? It&#8217;s funny how lyrics operate within the context of studio-recorded pop music. I&#8217;ve been listening to my favorite 10 or so ELO songs on my\u00a0iPod\u00a0lately, and while marveling at how good Jeff Lynne&#8216;s voice could be the rare times he let it be heard\u00a0without obstruction by the aural shades that\u00a0were\u00a0layers <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/what%e2%80%99s-your-favorite-elo-lyric\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[46,204,47,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}