Electric Light Orchestra

Time (1981)

 

  1. Proglogue
  2. Twilight
  3. Yours Truly, 2095
  4. Ticket to the Moon
  5. The Way Life's Meant To Be
  6. Another Heart Breaks
  7. Rain is Falling
  8. From the End of the World
  9. The Lights Go Down
  10.Here is the News
  11.21st Century Man
  12.Hold On Tight
  13.Epilogue
  
  
  

By 1981, the Electric Light Orchestra ceased, at least nominally, to be an orchestra at all. Their album Time marked the quiet erasure of the word "orchestra" from the band's identity, now appearing on the record sleeve simply as “E.L.O.” — a rebranding that spoke volumes. Jeff Lynne himself later admitted fatigue with the orchestral gimmickry that had defined the band since its inception. This wasn’t so much a reinvention as it was a shrug — a conscious step away from the strings and bombast that had become both their trademark and their burden. For many fans, the lush symphonic textures were precisely what set the band apart. Their omission was felt.

In place of violins and cellos came synthesizers, vocoders, and a polished, chrome-plated soundscape. The concept? A not-so-distant future filled with mechanization, alienation, and robotic longing. Not the most original of themes — one suspects that Orwell’s 1984, suddenly only three years away, was weighing heavily on the musical imagination of the time. But if the idea was hardly novel, Lynne’s execution was anything but crude. For all its chilly futurism, Time remains stubbornly melodic — a pop record in disguise.

That’s not to say the album is entirely free of missteps. Yours Truly, 2095 dabbles in kitsch with wide-eyed enthusiasm, and Ticket to the Moon features the hilariously earnest couplet “Remember the good old 1980s / When things were so uncomplicated,” which sounds like it belongs in a soft drink commercial. In fact, the album's lead single, Hold On Tight, was famously dismissed by Casey Kasem as sounding like a jingle for yogurt. But then again, seriousness had never been ELO’s strong suit. It’s this occasional lapse into accidental comedy that gives the record much of its peculiar charm.

Musically, the album is unified by its obsession with the future — either lyrically or through an arsenal of retro-futuristic effects and robotically rendered soundscapes. For every tin-foiled toe-tapper like The Lights Go Down or From the End of the World, there is a more reflective counterpoint: Rain Is Falling, criminally underappreciated, and 21st Century Man, whose minor-key melancholy lingers longer than expected (a good thing). The whole thing is undeniably slick, a little absurd, and surprisingly affecting.

Time was a one-off. ELO would abandon the sci-fi trappings after this, perhaps sensing that the novelty had a short shelf life. But it remains a fascinating entry in their discography — not quite brilliant, certainly not banal, and, most importantly, still unmistakably Jeff Lynne.

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