No, I’m not leaving the Electric Light Orchestra off the best list.  What kind of stupid, ignorant person would do that?

“Livin’ Thing” – Electric Light Orchestra

#13 peak (January 8-15, 1977)
#77 year-end, 18 weeks on chart (16 in 1977)

As stated on my sins of omission section of today’s column… I love the Electric Light Orchestra.  That alone assured that no 1977 best would be complete without Jeff Lynne and his Beatlesque symphonic rock project being highlighted at some point.  So let’s dive into my ELO fandom story before we get into the song.

As a teenager, the Electric Light Orchestra were the first oldies band I officially became a fan of (yes, I took them up a few months before I became a Beatlemaniac).  Before that, when I was 10, in my childhood days where I simply liked random things, I became devastated when the local rhythmic oldies station that introduced me to disco was crushed by the one-two punch of a Christmas station, followed by the classic rock station 107.3 The Fox.  This was a blow that assured I wouldn’t hear “Love Machine” or “It Only Takes A Minute” again for a decade.  For a few months, I sat bored and uninterested as the new station played classic rock staples by groups such as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.  Then one day, ELO’s “Evil Woman,” a rock song with several tenets of disco, came on.  I heard its soaring strings, giant chorus hook, and iconic guitar riff, and I had finally found a song from the station I liked.

After years of hearing their songs off and on, late in 11th grade I took a more in-depth look at the band.  Here is where I officially became a fan, as their songs became weapons in the ugly battle against the then-dominant Club Boom in 2010 (god, that awful music year seems to just follow me around).  My iPod Touch blasted “Don’t Bring Me Down” too many times to count.  “Mr. Blue Sky,” the band’s most emblematic song, wasn’t too far behind.  When the majority of my basketball team the following season was blaring rap music I hated, I was ignoring it and listening to “Last Train To London” and “Hold On Tight” instead.  Two years later, when I bolted the Finger Lakes for Binghamton and college, I became the host of the prestigious WHRW radio program The Maladroit Renaissance for three years.  For each season, as well as the show finale at both WHRW and WRUB at Buffalo in grad school, ELO’s literal Beethoven-quoting “Roll Over Beethoven” was the leadoff song.  All of this is to say… Electric Light Orchestra rule.  And 1977 was their best year ever.

After breaking through with their album Face The Music and “Evil Woman,” in 1976 Lynne and company released their magnum opus A New World Record, whose singles impacted pop radio in 1977.  Later that year, at the height of their fame, they released their double album Out Of The Blue, which contains their signature song “Mr. Blue Sky” as well as the hits “Turn To Stone” and “Sweet Talkin’ Woman.”  With those songs not impacting Billboard until 1978, I’ll go through them then.  So let’s go back and discuss A New World Record, a near-perfect album.  The only truly bad thing about it is the inner sleeve photo of the band, where Lynne and violinist Mik Kaminski in particular look high as kites.  And I’m not referring to the aircraft.

Honest statement coming: the song I’m about to discuss in full isn’t even the best song on the album.  That would be “Tightrope,” the jaw-dropping album opener complete with a dramatic and God-fearing choir, daredevil guitar riffs, and a nail-biting story about how Lynne is hanging on the edge before someone “threw [him] down a line.”  Well, that takes care of one of my sins of omission for 1976.  Along with that, there’s “Rockaria!,” which I already discussed, the hard-rocking “Do Ya,” and the unknown-exploring title track “Mission (A World Record.”  And no, I’m not forgetting the other hit from the album, “Telephone Line,” which I was pleasantly surprised to learn made the top 15 of the Billboard year-end list.  While it came up short of making my top 20, “Telephone Line” and its yearning harmonies, huge drums, and devastated message of losing true love make it a winner.  Consider it the unofficial number 21 in my overall rankings. It’s just… “Livin’ Thing” just soars to amazing heights.

On paper, “Livin’ Thing” is among the most basic hits the band ever had.  Unlike “Fire On High,” there is no lengthy, epic intro.  It doesn’t have a hard rock edge like “Don’t Bring Me Down” or subsequent single “Do Ya.”  And it doesn’t have the extra funk element of “Showdown” or “Shine A Little Love.”  But then again, that may work to “Livin’ Thing” and its advantage.  With its soaring strings, falsetto vocal hooks, and its violin interludes, it is arguably the quintessential ELO song.  Then again, it is hard to argue against “Mr. Blue Sky,” but still…

The song opens with the tense violin interlude, where Mik Kaminski plays a solo that makes it sound like they’re about to introduce the third act of a melodrama.  It’s cheesy in the best way possible; that it’s acting like the heartbreak we’re about to endure is the must-see drama of the year.  It’s also rather noteworthy that unlike most songs, where Jeff Lynne’s guitar, Richard Tandy’s icy keyboards, and Bev Bevan’s huge drums take center stage, this song is mostly about the orchestra.  When introducing this song during its downturn on the charts, Casey Kasem, the DJ in charge of the omnipresent American Top 40, called ELO the “world’s first touring Rock & Roll chamber group” for a reason.  They really are an orchestra playing a pop song on “Livin’ Thing.”

Going into the lyrics, “Livin’ Thing” is clearly about love.  It’s one of the most blatantly obvious love songs I’ve heard in a long day, that even in my teenage years, when I couldn’t decipher what songs were about even if you read the lyrics to me at face value, I knew that love was the “livin’ thing,” the “terrible thing to lose.”  And yet somehow, people have gotten this song’s meaning messed up, believing that it’s an anti-abortion song.  Regardless of your stance, I highly doubt Jeff Lynne was trying to write about controversial topics being settled in landmark Supreme Court cases.  “Livin’ Thing” is about a breakup.  But with such a commonly used topic, the question is, does it succeed with its subject matter?  Yes.

What’s probably most notable about the lyrics is that “Livin’ Thing” starts off all sunshine and rainbows, only to steer into nightmare fuel as the song progresses.  Literally.  Just compare the opening verse to the third and final verse:

Sailin’ away on the crest of a wave, it’s like magic
Oh, rollin’ and ridin’ and slippin’ and slidin’, it’s magic

Takin’ a dive, ’cause you can’t halt the slide
Floating downstream (I’m takin’ a dive)
Oh, so let her go, don’t start spoiling the show
It’s a bad dream (I’m takin’, I’m takin’)

Going from the ecstatic feeling of being in love in the first verse, to the fearful dread of the chorus, the third verse is absolute devastation.  It has all the feel of a cartoonish “Poof!  NOOOOOOO!!!!!” moment.  

And the orchestra matches the conflict of the song.  It is all bright and dreamy in the opening verse, with its plucked E and D violin strings.  But the third verse is where the orchestra really emphasizes the conflict.  The chord progression may not change in the song, but then the high C strings come in and drown the song in devastation.  And then come those swirling strings.  Seventies songs tended to be ridiculously hit or miss when they resorted to these.  Just look at the career of Bob Esty, a disco producer from this time.  When he added the swirling pattern of rapidly ascending and descending strings to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” (uncredited, because the music industry is stupid), it worked.  Just one year later, he used the same tactic on Cher’s “Take Me Home” and it was a disaster.  Well, on “Livin’ Thing”… the ascending/descending string pattern is incredible.  It has all the effect of being uncontrollably dragged downstream, away from love and happiness.  It’s the perfect ending to a tragic love story.

“Livin’ Thing” is the perfect encapsulation of perfect love gone bad.  It’s one of the ELO songs that demonstrates just how much the orchestra could add to a simple pop song, and proved they could turn the most standard and common subject matter into cinematic execution.  “Livin’ Thing” is proof that the Electric Light Orchestra were one of the greatest classic rock bands of the seventies, and no, I am not taking that statement back anytime soon.

UP NEXT: Time to funk this place up at #8!

SOURCES

“Livin’ Thing by Electric Light Orchestra.” Songfacts 2022. Web. 4 August 2022 https://www.songfacts.com/facts/electric-light-orchestra/livin-thing.

“Bob Esty: Question Time.” Donna Summer Time 2010. Web. 4 August 2022 http://www.donnasummer.it/questiontime.html.

IMAGE SOURCES

Single cover from IMDb

Inner sleeve photo of ELO where Jeff and Richard appear to be high from Vinyl Distractions. Originally from the A New World Record album sleeve.

Photo of ELO from Power of Pop