Credit: Far Out / Jeff Lynne
Thu 30 July 2026 18:00, UK
Jeff Lynne has created a reputation of being a musical genius while also being one of the most unassuming rock and roll stars of all time.
He was happy to put in a good day’s work every single time he walked into the studio, and even though not everything worked out the way he wanted it to, there was never any record that he made where it didn’t seem complete by the end of its runtime. He knew how to achieve any vision he put his mind to, but he also realised when some songs needed to be tweaked a little bit to register with the public.
But when he first started working with ELO, his music wasn’t exactly the space-themed pop that he’s known for today. Singles like ‘Can’t Get It Out of My Head’ were a long way away, and as much as he liked ‘10538 Overture’, the tune wasn’t exactly going to be competing with the other songs on the charts at the time. He needed to streamline the process, but that would take a few more years.
There are many pieces of the band’s discography that are downright prog-rock for the time, but Lynne didn’t want to spend the rest of his life making strange songs for the masses, either. He was one of the biggest Beatles fans in the world, so he knew that it was possible for a band to break down those barriers while still being experimental, and it just took a few more records before he was truly ready to kick things into gear.
And while many of the band’s classic records have hints of brilliance throughout their runtime, A New World Record is by far the best pop album that Lynne ever made with the group. Nearly half of the track listing deserves to be a part of the band’s greatest hits, and even when they do get experimental on tunes like ‘Shangri-la’, it sounds completely natural after going through massive hits like ‘Livin’ Thing’.
Even with all of the more ambitious rock and roll tunes, though, ‘Do Ya’ seemed a bit too familiar for the superfans. Lynne had already tried out the tune when working with his previous bands, but now that he had a better handle on what the studio was supposed to sound like, he knew he could finally do the song justice after spending years toying with how it should sound.
The tune already had a monster hook, and when those roaring guitars came in, Lynne knew that he had a chance to give his song a second wind, saying, “‘Do Ya’ was such a good song I wanted the ELO audience to hear it. They loved it onstage, so we re-recorded it in a slightly different arrangement. I think we all knew the album was a step up, in accessibility, image, everything.”
Further reading: From The Vault
It’s not that kind of magic that was lost on all of Lynne’s fans, either. Tom Petty was paying special attention when he heard what Lynne was doing when he started working on The Heartbreakers’ albums later on, and anyone trying to get a mammoth guitar sound owes it to themselves to study that wall of guitars that came up on the finished version of the tune.
‘Do Ya’ didn’t need to be one of the most classic songs that ELO ever made by any stretch, but it was a case of Lynne finally giving the song a home after so many years. He had written something that was far better than what he could do when he was still working with his other bands, and now that he had a better handle on what it was all about, all he needed was the right idea to make everything sound great.
