Electric Light Orchestra – Simply the Best Review

Compilations are not just to milk a dormant band but are, also, released when the band are at the peak of their powers. They make little sense now with the rise of playlists, the ability to make your own compilation at home will always win out over the lacklustre offerings of this album or that studio-approved effort. Bootleggers have the best bits while the studio has the source. Simply the Best, a pilfering of hits from Electric Light Orchestra, has all the usual suspects. It is identical to many of the other albums released by Jet Records, though this one released during the peak of ELO’s commercial success. Just before Discovery, right after Out of the Blue, it’s a prime time to harvest the Jeff Lynne-fronted group’s produce. Released around the time of Discovery, Simply the Best has no songs, not even the singles, from the Don’t Bring Me Down-featuring album, but it doesn’t need that to make for a solid run of hits. There is enough on Simply the Best for listeners of the time.  

But how does it fare now? What we know of the band in modern times and what we knew of them in the late 1970s has changed very little. ELO exists in a state of being sorely underrated yet overplayed because their hits are what defines them. Light affairs with a message retrospectively added by wistful listeners who remember losing or gaining apart of themselves with Lynne soundtracking their lives. The fact that extends to listeners even now is an assurance of the quality work the band provided, and Simply the Best is a solid collection of such efforts. Mr. Blue Sky is left for the end, the anxiety building rather nicely to see whether it’ll appear or not to listeners who hadn’t looked at the cassette box. Solid draws with Evil Woman as the opener, and then into Livin’ Thing. It’s not in release order, but there is at least some sense of reason behind this.  

Epic, Jet, whatever label it is who were behind this, likely both when it comes to distribution, had an idea in mind, an inclination of what could be done with the work at hand. There’s a blessed omission of Roll Over Beethoven here, and instead the focus is on originals. Even with just eleven songs, the focus on just the Lynne-penned pieces is a refreshing experience. It means the likes of Ma Ma Ma Belle and Rockaria are given a space to flourish without being shunted into what remains a particularly weak and grating Chuck Berry cover. Beyond that are Sweet Talkin’ Woman and Telephone Line, two great choices for the pre-Strange Magic moments. One of the more conclusive yet lesser-known compilations of ELO, and if anything, this is a good pre-Discovery taster.  

Nobody should really need to hunt down Simply the Best unless they’re building a raft out of obsolete tape, but then if they do have a Walkman handy, it’s worth skipping through these eleven essential ELO songs. Each offers a real vibrancy, a clear understanding of the band at the time. Unlike many of the compilations which hope to rest on the history of the group so early into their years as a band, Simply the Best is, as its title would suggest, a collection of what the label believes is the best. It’s hardly up to Lynne to decide, it wouldn’t be until the band reformed in the early 2010s that he was given a shot at laying out what he believed were, truly, the best. But this is a nice collection of songs, at-the-time contemporary pieces, worth experiencing.