Electric Light Orchestra – Livin’ Thing: Best Review

There are likely more compilation albums from Electric Light Orchestra than there are songs. Does it show that the popularity of the band was endearing and lasted the test of time because their writing is above par? No, it shows that anyone will buy the same collection of tracks should they be given shiny, new wrapping paper. What’s inside is still great, but you’ve heard it all before. There’s no need to own more than one ELO compilation, and that one, The Very Best of ELO, can still be bought for a relatively low price because otherwise they’d use the excess stock to fill in pot holes on the road out of Kirk Ella. Nonetheless, Livin’ Thing: Best is notable for all the wrong reasons. It’s a chance to subvert what listeners want, and offer instead what nobody in their right minds would think. It’s one thing to suggest one song is a hit over another, but it’s the mind of a maniac that pieced this one together.  

No Mr. Blue Sky is the sore moment to contend with. Consider why that may be. Either they didn’t have the rights, which they did because Out of the Blue tracks like Turn to Stone are on here, or they just didn’t think it was worth including. Mr. Blue Sky, the song which catapulted ELO into relevancy once more, decades on from its release. No room for Mr. Blue Sky but enough time for another dull Roll Over Beethoven inclusion and, of all songs to pull from Xanadu, I’m Alive. It’s a bit slapdash this compilation, and it feels like there’s no rhyme or reason to what the record label has chosen. Livin’ Thing: Best is one of the more obvious showcases of ELO’s music being used to peddle a few album sales, to keep the brand alive despite Lynne stepping back from the group to focus on remastering the collected works of The Beatles. He’s better suited to plugging away at George Harrison deep cuts, anyway.  

Is there any salvation in Livin’ Thing: Best, then? No. But that shouldn’t stop you from listening the whole way through. There’s still the truly great songs like Evil Woman, Confusion, and a nice nod to Twilight found within. What the real problem is, though, is omitting greats to make some half-baked statement about the consistencies of the band’s output elsewhere. You can’t have Rock and Roll is King feature on an album without Mr. Blue Sky and tout it as the very best of the band. It’s a compilation effort with plenty of holes in it. Livin’ Thing isn’t even the first song on the compilation, which would at least have been a suggestion of knowing how to link the title of the album to one of the featured tracks.  

Little troubles like this are what will define which compilation people cough up their money for. That much is clear from how many were made, and how few of them offered much of a difference. Livin’ Thing does offer some differences, though they’re wholly negative experiences which pale when compared to other, better selling compilations. Still, it’s not as though these compiled efforts are competing with one another. Livin’ Thing: Best is a mid-1990s compilation which comes at a point where interest in the band is even lower than it was when they released Balance of Power. Great songs the whole way through, that’s not the takeaway from this. It’s the fact that great songs can be so miserably thrown together, like some half-hearted hope that the name alone will carry it. That’s what happens for many of these compiled efforts.