This song is ignored by most, but it scores points for having just the right amount of bleakness, a touch of funk (or at least as much as Jeff Lynne could muster) in the bridge, and the chance for drummer Bev Bevan to play the occasional drum roll. Honorable mention goes to "Mission (A World Record)", one of the more adventurous tracks that you'll find here. Nonetheless, these are the standouts on this record. Both songs could probably do with a bit less melodrama by this time, bandleader Jeff Lynne had jumped with both feet into the hit-making fire and was laying things on a bit thick. It also ends well - very well, actually - with "Shangri-La," a mournful ballad with an outro with vocals by English operatic soprano Mary Thomas that lend a bit of gravitas to the piece. The album starts off well with "Tightrope," which has ELO doing its customary Beatles tribute to good effect. Nonetheless A New World Record deserves some credit for delivering some well-crafted guilty pleasures, with the emphasis on the guilty. Almost four decades later, it's hard to deny that punk pretty much won that argument - groups such as the Clash, the Ramones and the Sex Pistols would pave the way for new wave and alternative rock and have since proven to be far more influential than the monster stadium bands of this era such as Styx, Kansas, Boston and, yes, ELO. Review Summary: ELO hits the big time with a sweet, slickly produced Top 40/album-rock crossover LP that leaves a bit of a saccharine aftertasteĮLO's sixth studio album A New World Record brought the band with big fiddles into the big leagues as it joined the pantheon of corporate rock gods that were packing sports arenas, making entirely too much money for their own good, and inadvertently laying the groundwork for a punk rock revolution.
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