![\"Jeff](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Jeff-Lynne-Electric-Light-Orchestra-1990-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ Jeff Lynne<\/p>\n
Sat 13 June 2026 1:00, UK <\/p>\n
Jeff Lynne<\/a> wasn\u2019t going to rest until all of his songs sounded absolutely perfect.\u00a0<\/p>\n Half of the reason why ELO never toured in the back half of their career was that Lynne didn\u2019t want to sacrifice what he heard in the studio, and listening to some of his greatest work, it\u2019s not like he was ever trying to phone it in whenever making one of his musical symphonies. He felt that he would do anything to make the song sound right, but even if some tunes were better than others, he felt that certain albums had songs that were beyond comparison in his discography.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not like Lynne was ever one to talk himself up as one of the greatest of all time. He\u2019s just happy to have written some great tunes during his lifetime, and when it came to working with some of his famous friends, he was proud to have at least held his own next to his fellow legends. Not everyone can make the remaining Beatles still sound amazing<\/a>, but when Lynne got the group to resurrect their last songs, it felt like he sprinkled his own Beatles magic onto the tape.<\/p>\n In fact, most of Lynne\u2019s favourite works that he ever did usually came down to what he was working on with other people. Of course, he could still have moments where he talked up tunes like \u2018Turn to Stone\u2019 and \u2018Mr Blue Sky\u2019 as moments where he nailed it in the studio, but when talking about the most fun that he\u2019s ever had working on one of his projects, he usually gravitate more towards what he did with the Traveling Wilburys or his time going back and forth with Tom Petty on Full Moon Fever.<\/a> <\/p>\n After taking a break from the studio, though, Lynne seemed to finally have the urge to make something on his own. Armchair Theatre was the only time he got to make a true solo album in his career, and while the last two ELO albums have been a decent look at what he could sound like in his older age, Long Wave was his excuse to make something a bit more sophisticated than everything else he had worked on.<\/p>\n Before he had even started to fall in love with rock and roll, he was already used to hearing standards coming out of every room in his house when he was a kid. A lot of those songs he knew like the back of his hand, and while it took him a long time to learn them whenever he played them, his voice sounded immaculate, gliding across tunes like \u2018Beyond the Sea\u2019 and \u2018Love is a Many-Splendoured Thing\u2019.<\/p>\n This kind of easy listening wasn\u2019t going to impress the rock crowd, but by this point in his career, Lynne didn\u2019t care so long as he could see the beauty of the tune, saying<\/a>, \u201cI really wanted to give these songs their due respect, because they\u2019re so beautiful. It\u2019s so rare to get a load of songs where the words are as good as the tune, and the chords are just superb. Everything about them \u2013 I\u2019m just thrilled to play. So, learning all the bits of those was like going to university or something.\u201d<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n And while a handful of great classic rockers have tried their hand at softer tunes, Lynne is one of the few who seem to have a genuine knack for it. His ear for arranging was always perfect in ELO, and given how great his voice still sounds, he\u2019s able to bring a lot more nuance to a lot of the songs here, especially when lifting the tune up a little bit on a song like \u2018She\u2019 or managing to make a song like \u2018At Last\u2019 sound perfect without having to stand in the shadow of what Etta James brought to the original.<\/p>\n It might not have been the coolest thing for a musician to do, but Lynne was never afraid of trying something like this, either. He and George Harrison had already bonded<\/a> over hearing some of the oldest songwriters in the world, and if Lynne could appreciate the musicality of someone like Hoagy Carmichael, he could certainly give the same level of respect to people like Rodgers and Hammerstein as well.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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