ELO voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!

[Flint]

I have mixed feeling about Electric Light Orchestra being inducted into the Hall of Fame. One the one hand, their "Out of the Blue" album was about as perfect as could be imagined. Every song stands out as fantastic, and as an album it flows perfectly and makes me want to play it over and over because I cannot get enough. It is genius!

That said, on the other hand ELO put out a ton of average to poor music. Their movie soundtracks were bleh, and some of their overplayed hits were annoying the first time I heard them. The recent new album by Jeff Lynn's ELO is pretty good, but not spectacular.

Overall, I love what ELO managed to create with "Out of the Blue" and a couple of other songs off other albums, but as a whole they are below average to poor. I wouldn't think they are worthy of the R&R Hall of Fame for their career.

Of course, worse have been let in, so maybe it doesn't matter since it is merely a popularity contest anyway.

 

[heeman]

I was never a fan of ELO...................

The End!

 

[mcad64]

They let Cheap Trick in, Joan Jett in, G nR in, why not ELO?

 

[Flint]

I am total agreement that we could question all three of those artists being in the hall of fame.

 

[TitaniumTroy]

Go ELO, Strange Magic, I Can't Get It Out Of My Head.Telephone Line, Evil Woman, ,,,Oh Yeah! Those would be my top favorites.
I thought this was interesting, I read this earlier this year:
The Beatles were a major influence on Lynne. In 1968, while performing with the Idle Race, he met The Beatles during the making of The White Album. Years later he admitted, "To be in the same room as the four of them caused me not to sleep for, like, three days." The original aim of Electric Light Orchestra was to take up "where the Beatles had left off, and to present it on stage." John Lennon praised the group, calling them the "sons of the Beatles".[1]

Critics often compared Electric Light Orchestra to The Beatles, and they were often criticised for "ripping off" the band. Lynne admitted that he "was very influenced by the Beatles' sound of '68 and '69. That has obviously been a big influence on the way [he] looked at songwriting" and said that being compared with The Beatles was the "ultimate compliment".[2]

Ok so not the best recording:

 

[Flint]

Jeff Lynn was not the original driving force. But he hit a creative peak with out of the blue.