![\"Jeff](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Jeff-Lynne-Electric-Light-Orchestra-1990-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ Jeff Lynne<\/p>\n
Sun 14 June 2026 7:45, UK <\/p>\n
An artist can normally be their own worst enemy once they\u2019ve been around the block a couple of times. Even though many musicians can go on a run of perfect albums, every smash hit is another bar to clear whenever they return to the studio trying to make something equally as good. <\/p>\n
While Jeff Lynne<\/a> could never claim to have any outright duds during Electric Light Orchestra\u2019s development, he admitted that he would never match what he did on this massive album.<\/p>\n Trying to match up to a previous record is a very dangerous game for any real artist to play. An artist\u2019s job, no matter which form their expression takes, should always be to march forward. It is why, quite rightly, so many of your favourite bands can feel a little bit strained when continuously asked about a famous record from their past. <\/p>\n Music is about expressing yourself, and very rarely do we want to sit in our feelings for too long. It means that most band\u2019s discogrpahies represent a journey rather than a rehashed experience playing out again and again. Rightly, then, every ELO album felt like it was building to something in the mid-1970s. Since Lynne had been working with The Move before striking off on his own, it\u2019s easy to see him working out the bugs on their first albums before they started getting mainstream hits like \u2018Can\u2019t Get It Out Of My Head\u2019.<\/p>\n Right after Eldorado, though, every single album seemed to have some magic thrown into it. Whether it was Lynne\u2019s obsession with The Beatles or his symbiotic relationship with his bandmates, records like Face the Music and A New World Record took everything great about their sound and went beyond what anyone had thought possible, like the string sections on \u2018Telephone Line\u2019 or the idea of putting an operetta vocal break in the middle of \u2018Rockaria!\u2019.<\/p>\n While the bar was still high, Lynne found he had more than enough quality material for a double LP for Out of the Blue. Outside of having the traditional classical sections, this album is probably the closest anyone would ever come to getting that trip to the stars that Lynne always promised, especially on the third disc, where every song bleeds into each other as one continuous movement.<\/p>\n Although any would be thrilled to have that kind of album under their belt, it did feel like a final chapter of sorts. Lynne had hit the peak of what he could do with all of his bandmates, but once he was asked to follow a masterpiece, he knew that whatever he put out afterwards was going to look worse by comparison.<\/p>\n For Lynne, Out of the Blue was clearly his watershed moment, and despite moving on, he knew it couldn\u2019t be equalled, saying<\/a>, \u201cThere was no way of following that, but there were contracts to fulfil, so I was forced to do things I didn\u2019t want to do, just because of signing bits of paper when you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re doing: Sign that? Oh yeah, of course, thank you! You can have 50 quid and all the brown ale you can drink. You don\u2019t realise what you\u2019re getting into. So it turned out I had to do another 93 albums for ELO!!!\u201d<\/p>\n Still, that might be selling the later material a bit short as well. Sure, not every album set the world on fire like they did back in the day, but if it meant getting a handful of great tunes like \u2018Last Train To London\u2019 or the massive sing-along of \u2018Don\u2019t Bring Me Down<\/a>\u2019, it was well worth it for Lynne to keep going. <\/p>\n And it\u2019s not like people didn\u2019t take notice, either, with Petty eventually stealing some cues from Lynne\u2019s chord structures on songs like \u2018Change of Heart\u2019 before joining him in The Traveling Wilburys. While Lynne should be commended for never creating any stinkers throughout his career, it\u2019s almost comforting knowing that some of his records weren\u2019t as heartfelt as he thought they could have been.<\/p>\n Perhaps that is why Out of the Blue continues to occupy such a unique place within ELO\u2019s catalogue. It represents the moment when all of Lynne\u2019s strengths, his gift for melody, his love of The Beatles, his fascination with orchestration and his instinct for grand concepts, aligned perfectly. Even if he never believed he could surpass it, the enduring quality of the music that followed suggests that Lynne\u2019s real achievement was not reaching a peak, but maintaining a remarkably high standard for decades afterwards.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"Jeff](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Jeff-Lynne-Electric-Light-Orchestra-1970s-Musician-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n
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<\/a> The Far Out Classic Rock Newsletter<\/p>\n