Rarely is it worth sifting through the bargain bin. There may be a few albums of note in there, a recognisable face mixed in with the Engelbert Humperdinck records and ABBA compilations, but a band on the fringes of that rubbish pile is Electric Light Orchestra. Their work was often incredible, but the sheer volume of compilation efforts made to throw out the same few songs is mesmerising. The Very Best of ELO I is the first of two in a series which pulls the inevitable tracks into place. There are no surprises to be found on this release from 1990. Five years on from the band’s at-the-time final release, and it seems it’s still suitable to milk the Jeff Lynne-fronted group dry. Whatever they can get from the penny-pinching days of compilation work. It’s still a lucrative market, or would be if it weren’t for the dominance of streaming. What ties all these compilations together is, no matter how deep you dive, you find they’re all almost the same.
Is it any different to the similarly titled The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra, which was released just four years later? Somewhat. You can only offer so much in the way of differences for ELO albums. All the hits are there. All you can do is guess the order. Listeners will never receive a best-of compilation without Mr. Blue Sky or Evil Woman. That’s not the problem. The limited amount of material does not warrant the number of releases. It’s simple mathematics. If you take the same twenty or so songs, shuffle them around, you do get different results. But it’s such a small change that it makes no difference whether Sweet Talkin’ Woman has opened the album or Strange Magic. It’s all the same songs regardless, and the chances of there being a bounty of archival footage going unused is a knife in the back of any dedicated ELO listener. What’s stopping them from a true archival release?
Who knows. It’s not as though the band were one and done on every recording. They certainly have some alternate versions or early demos which would be of interest to listeners beyond the usual stock options of a hits-featuring album. Everything from Turn to Stone to Livin’ Thing is included. Of course it is. It’s not like they’re going to feature Latitude 88 North on a compilation, is it? Compilations are redundant to modern-day listening because a listener can piece together a playlist for themselves. But even at a time when it provided a chance to listen to the hits of an album in quick succession, these releases are completely redundant. What purpose does it serve ELO or their listeners to continually put together the same songs? Once you have one, you have them all.
But these are some of the most popular pieces of work in British music history. They are established, legacy-like recordings which will get a kick out of listeners old and new. The Very Best of ELO I knew this at the time. A yearly release of ELO material was about average, and yet not one of these compilation albums featured anything new. No deep cuts, no hidden gems or demo recordings, which means warranting a purchase of the album. Nothing of the sort is shared. It’s all just a cheap and fast turnaround for the record company that owns the rights to the band’s music. Not even compilations released after they reformed, both in 2001 and 2014, bothered to include songs from Zoom, Alone in the Universe, or From Out of Nowhere. Peculiar wastes of plastic. At least now these just take up space on Spotify.
I beg to differ, there is an album called ELOs Greatest Hits that has the logo on a yellow background. It contains all the usual hits but also loads from their albums (even the early ones) plus stuff from the travelling wilburys and elo part II . It also contained a cover of Living Thing done by The Beautiful South which I didn’t even remember being released. If you have access to Spotify there are some excellent compilations on there.