A first volume which featured just about every hit in the Electric Light Orchestra discography means a second volume is immediately redundant. Yet the brainiacs in charge of compiling these best-of efforts as a way of adapting to the ever-changing Spotify algorithm are hard at work. ELO will remain a constant force with or without shoddy compilation efforts. Some parts of the 1980s did not die. Every artist with at least three chart-featuring hits behind them is subject to some best-of album at some stage. The Jeff Lynne-fronted ELO has far too many to count. More landfill and slop for those who want a new meaning for those soft-rock, orchestra-featuring classics. 50th Anniversary Vol. 2 offers absolutely nothing. Not one second of quality. That is not because the songs collated here are underwhelming, very few aren’t. These are classics ripped through like newspaper pages stuffed into fish and chip takeaway boxes.
Twenty-five more songs, some of which were omitted from the first compilation for reasons of giving it a sequel. That must be the reason Last Train to London and All Over the World did not feature on 50th Anniversary Vol. 1. Not a mistake, but a malicious attempt at getting ELO a stat boost. All that matters now is numbers. The bigger the better. Can anything earnest be gauged by 50th Anniversary Vol. 2? No. It appears that even with contemporary releases and a farewell show blowout at Hyde Park, the Lynne-shaped cow must still be milked. Secret Messages, From Out of Nowhere, and Alone in the Universe are slapped into a sloppily made compilation effort. Where the theme of each album is something the band can take pride in, crushing it all together makes for a poor listening experience. It feels quite pathetic after realising the purpose of compilation efforts is made redundant by streaming.
Yet they still appear. When I Was a Boy, One Step at a Time, and So Serious are not exactly hits worth remembering. They aren’t even hits. Not to be remembered. Cast them aside. 50th Anniversary Vol. 2 at its very best is a collection of songs which did not quite make it to their expected chart-topping destination. You can feature Xanadu and Hold on Tight all you like, but an album effort celebrating fifty years of the band does not need to be split into two albums’ worth. It may look neat having fifty songs total, one for every year appears to be the aim, but this was released fifty-one years after the band was founded. He shoots, he misses, he trips on the shoelaces of each boot tied together. An absolute comical farce of a compilation which, had it been printed in any physical format, would be better off used as an oversized coaster or a pizza tray.
Not even the artwork can do the band justice here. A band with such a prominent visual experience backing them over decades of performance and yet the compilation cannot even get a spaceship in there. Nor can the band these days either, with their generative artificial intelligence slop. Their standards are now as low as those compiling efforts, seemingly by picking song names from a hat. That is about as much effort displayed here, though those behind this ELO cover likely lack the energy and thought needed to attain said hat. A random assortment of songs which very clearly has little left after piecing together its first volume. 50th Anniversary Vol. 2 is digital filler at its worst.
