(Credits: Far Out / Jeff Lynne)
Wed 17 December 2025 20:15, UK
All of the greatest parts of pop music seemed to come so easy to Jeff Lynne whenever he played.
Even when greats like Tom Petty were working with the ELO mastermind, he had to admit that there were pieces of his tunes that would have been impossible to crack that Lynne would be able to handle with no trouble at all half the time. Lynne never took that sixth sense for granted, but that also came from years of listening out for the right songs that lit his world on fire when he was a kid.
Although not every ELO song was meant to be a massive hit, Lynne was always focused on the dramatics that he heard in every single song he played. Plenty of artists could manage to make music like The Beatles and Stones and carve out their own spot in history at the time, but when listening to bands like the Fab Four, Lynne wanted to dig a little deeper into what made them so great beyond having some fantastic tunes in their arsenal. It was about creating a world for the song to live in for those few minutes, and that was thanks to the production behind everything.
Because in the world of rock and roll, Lynne knew that George Martin was as important as the other members of The Beatles behind the scenes, and despite many of the greatest groups Phil Spector produced had spectacular voices behind them, it was about that lush wall of sound that was created every single time they played. But whereas rock had its own distinct sound, Motown went in a much different direction.
Soul music may not have had the same punch as rock and roll, but listening to everyone from The Temptations to The Four Tops, all of them knew what made people’s hearts ache every single time they heard their music. And while The Miracles may have helped solidify Hitsville as a cultural force half the time, the Marvelettes were the ones that showed everyone that Detroit’s ascent to the top was more than just a fluke.
But while Lynne could understand how some of the most extravagant tunes of all time were constructed, he was left dumbfounded that a group could make a song that sounded this pristine, saying, “It doesn’t take me back, listening to it these days; it just impresses me more. Like, wow! How did they do that? How did they get that sound then? What a beautiful mix. I’m always impressed by the balance of things. I’m blown away by the balance. How they did it, I don’t know.”
Then again, maybe the best songs of all time don’t need to be understood on that level much of the time. Most people could spend years analysing every single piece of a song like ‘I Am The Walrus’ and wonder how the hell The Beatles came to that particular conclusion, but when it came to a lot of Motown artists, greatness was something that happened when everyone was able to capture the same energy on a record.
Were all of them technically perfect? Absolutely not, but that’s what made them special in their own way. Everyone doesn’t have to be playing everything exactly on the money to get the right sound onto the record, and even if Lynne spent hours making the greatest symphonies of all time, he knew it wouldn’t master unless he put the same passion into it that he heard on those Motown tunes.
Because if there’s one thing that the greats should always teach us, it’s not to follow their footsteps to the letter. Anyone could make every mathematical step that their idols did, but the people don’t want a rehash of the same thing. They want something authentic, and as long as they can hear a real person on the other side of the speaker, that was all that mattered half the time.
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