Electric Light Orchestra / YMMV

Awesome Music:
- "Fire on High", alternating between symphonic bombast and acoustic rocking-out. Would also make good boss music for a video game.
- EVERYTHING about "Evil Woman", really.
- The Motor Mouth bridge to "Turn to Stone". This gets a lot of cheers when played live.
- "Rockaria!" Who knew glam rock, symphonic rock and opera could mesh so well together?
- The group's 1981 concept album "Time" is pretty much the literal definition of this to some. Every song is varied and evokes a different atmosphere, the instrumentals are awesome (despite the lack of an acoustic string section) and the bone-chilling Prologue really establishes the hauntingly surreal, futuristic tone of the album.
- ELO's earlier concept album, "Eldorado: A Symphony", is also this. "Can't Get It Out of My Head" (notable as the group's first major chart hit) in particular qualifies.
- "Mr. Blue Sky". It's impossible to listen too without feeling happy or at least cracking a smile. Is it any wonder why it has been used in countless movies and TV shows?
- Discovery, maligned though it is by some parts of ELO's fanbase, has some fantastic songs. "Shine a Little Love" and "Last Train to London" are the two best of them.
Broken Base: A common argument still being fought is whether ELO was better led under Jeff Lynne or Roy Wood. Other arguments can be had at all the albums after Out of the Blue.
Covered Up: By rerecording "Do Ya" for ELO after initially writing and singing it when he was part of The Move, Jeff Lynne ended up overshadowing his own song after the ELO version became more well known than the original. According to drummer Bev Bevan, they only did it after Todd Rundgren kept getting "Do Ya" attributed to him (Rundgren's band Utopia had recorded a well-received version that was a live concert staple for them, so Utopia had Covered Up the song as well).
Fan Nickname: Disco? Very! (also known as Very Disco). It wasn't a fan who coined this nickname for Discovery, though, but keyboardist Richard Tandy!
Fanon Discontinuity: Progressive Rock fans tend not to care for their later, poppier work, as evidenced by the hate for the disco-influenced Discovery.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- Reportedly, "Twilight" became an otaku anthem after use in the famous opening animation for Daicon IV.
- Prior to the release of their sixth album, A New World Record (which was described as their breakthrough in the UK due to it being their first top ten album there), they were significantly more successful in the US than in their native UK.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The line "Don't bring me down, GROOSS" from "Don't Bring Me Down" took on a new meaning in 2011, when The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword ended up featuring a character (Groose) whose name sounds identical to the gibberish lyric from the song in question and crashes into the main character, Link, while the latter is skydiving, resulting in the former bringing the latter down in the literal sense.
- In the album Time we have "Yours Truly, 2095" a song about a man falling in love with his computer thanks to her voice. A few years later we got a film (her) with the same plot.
- Even better before this one we had movie with the opposite plot ... with two songs by Jeff Lynne!
Hype Backlash:
- One of the worst victims of this trope. While they were extremely popular during their heyday, people began putting them down as "generic synthpop drivel" after their decline. This trend seems to be reversing itself now, though.
- While "Mr. Blue Sky" is still considered to be a great song, there are some fans who consider the song to be "overrated" and are sick of the constant exposure it gets in media compared to ELO's other songs.
Memetic Mutation: It's been common to put Mr. Blue Sky to montages of various things, especially in an inappropriate way. Most notably, this has it set to a montage of violence in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Moment of Awesome: As of December 2016, Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood, Richard Tandy, and Bev Bevan are inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as ELO!
More Popular Spin-Off: The band was originally started as a side project of The Move. Then the Move broke up and Roy Wood left for a solo career after ELO's first album. Then ELO got popular. Most notably, ELO hit it big in America, which The Move never managed to do.
Most Wonderful Sound: The chorus of "Evil Woman."
My Real Daddy: While Roy Wood is the one who came up with the idea of ELO, it's universally agreed that Jeff Lynne is the true driving force of the band and the one who truly defined ELO, especially since he has been the leader since Roy Wood's departure in 1972 and the most consistent member of the band since its founding. So much so that when ELO was revived in 2014, it was renamed to "Jeff Lynne's" ELO.
Narm Charm:
- Jeff Lynne himself sees some of ELO's work as this.
  Some of these songs are so over-the-top it's amazing.
- "Jungle" has the line "chooka chooka hoo la ley" in its chorus, a line which cements itself in "So stupid it's genius".
- "Summer and Lightning"'s brief sample of "The Joker" by The Steve Miller Band, the brief bit of carnival music between the lines "It's a merry-go-round" and the chorus of "Endless Lies", and the use of the tunes "Rain Rain Go Away" and "It's Raining It's Pouring" during "Rain Is Falling" could be considered this as well.
Nightmare Fuel:
- "Fire On High", at least until the guitar comes in.
- The Last Note Nightmare example from The Diary of Horace Wimp.
- The robotic vocoded voice that says "Please turn me over" at the end of "Mr. Blue Sky".
Popularity Polynomial: While the band were critical and commercial favorites in the '70s, their shift to disco in the late '70s and Synth-Pop in the '80s resulted in many turning away from them, and when they unceremoniously dissolved in 1986, critics and audiences regarded them as overrated. Decades later, however, they gained renewed popularity as people revisited their old work and positively reevaluated Discovery, Time and Secret Messages, helped by the band's reunions in the 21st century and "Mr. Blue Sky" seeing Revival by Commercialization. Nowadays, they're just as beloved as they were during their heyday.
Signature Song: Thanks to Revival by Commercialization, "Mr. Blue Sky" took over this slot in The New '10s, but there are plenty of candidates: "Don't Bring Me Down", "Evil Woman", "Hold On Tight", etc. Among anime fans, "Prelude/Twilight" is a huge one, thanks to its (unauthorized) use in Studio Gainax's Daicon IV animation in 1983.
Spiritual Successor:
- John Lennon himself referred to ELO as "the Son of the Beatles".
- And in turn, The Polyphonic Spree has been compared to ELO, with songs like "Soldier Girl" proving the point.
- A one-off supergroup called LEO featuring Bleu, Andy Sturmer of Jellyfish and Taylor Hanson released a spot on pastiche album of ELO called Alpacas Orgling in 2003.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans weren't happy with Discovery, claiming ELO sold out to disco.
Vindicated by History:
- "Mr. Blue Sky" was not one of the band's biggest hits upon initial release, peaking at #6 in the UK during a period when most of the band's singles went Top 10 anyway, and only managed #37 in the US. However, since being featured in dozens of commercials and movie trailers since the mid-90s, its easily become their most recognizable song and its garnered critical attention from — of all people — indie rock fans, thanks to its use in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Doctor Who. If anything, this caused renewed Hype Backlash from old-school fans who see the younger generation as late to the party, and co-opting something because it's "cool".
- Discovery initially spawned major backlash from audiences despite its commercial success, owed to it making a hard shift to disco at a time when the Disco Sucks movement was gaining steam (to put it into perspective, Disco Demolition Night occurred just 11 days after the album released). In the 21st century, with many analysts reevaluating the anti-disco movement as being hugely fueled by racism, queerphobia, and xenophobia, many people went back to Discovery and reappraised it as one of ELO's most underrated albums.

YMMV / Electric Light Orchestra

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