Lift me up

[Helmut83]

Aug 14, 2017 14:00:31 GMT elophile said:

Yes, cloying is definitely the right description. I like all of them, especially Midnight Blue (that strummy guitar, right Helmut83 ?) but they are sickly sweet. I don't think that level of sentiment comes naturally to Jeff.

[bluey]

How about Showdown? 

"She cried to the southern wind, 'bout a love that was sure to end.
Every dream in her heart was gone, heading for a Showdown"

[eloneen]

bluey "Showdown" is a great song, one of my favorites. It has an edginess to it that sets it apart from some of the sad love songs I love so much, but it is definitely about a "love thang" gone bad. 

[tightrope]

I think Starlight is one of the most beautiful, dreamy love songs I've ever heard.

[unomusette]

I'd like to nominate Shangri La for the mercilessly melancholic category.
If it wasn't for the epic outro it would be downright miserable.

[Helmut83]

I'd like to nominate "One Summer Dream" for the most ethereal song. It feels like flying slowly through the cosmos in a mix of sad and pleasant feelings.

[babyzoomer]

What about The Whale? Has anyone managed to get a translation of the lyrics, which go something like "Mwaaaaaaaahhhh!".

[pelo]

First of all, lyrics are not that important to me. Still, I would say that in general I prefer lyrics that leave some room for interpretation.Is Strange Magic about love? It could be, but if you want to interpret it differently this also works perfectly. Same goes for songs such as One Summer Dream or Living Thing. Regarding the latter, Jeff, in recent years, has, of course, frequently stated that it's about love being a living thing. But that was because so many people thought about this being a song about abortion. Still, it's obvious that ambiguous meanings are sometimes intended by Jeff, something he even admitted with regard to Balance Of Power.

[ShardEnder]

Aug 14, 2017 11:39:16 GMT eloneen said:

Aug 14, 2017 7:44:27 GMT nickheynes said:

Lift me up is one of my fave JL songs but I can't think of any others where he sings or mentions "love" as he does in this song.

Anyone else have any ideas or examples of where he does?

I've been thinking something similar, and wondering if there are any ELO songs where Jeff says "I love you." 

Jeff sings "I love you" in Believe Me Now, only it's hard to tell because of how much delay he was using...

[ShardEnder]

Aug 15, 2017 1:36:58 GMT babyzoomer said:

What about The Whale? Has anyone managed to get a translation of the lyrics, which go something like "Mwaaaaaaaahhhh!".

Now there's the great unsolved mystery... I suspect that even the multitracks wouldn't provide us with a definitive answer, as it sounds like Jeff was singing through a modulator of some kind, rather than this effect being applied during the mixdown or even mastering stages. I seem to recall someone once asking him about the lyrics to this song (along with the spoken word part of Epilogue from Time), but he admitted to long forgetting what had originally been written. If you consider that Jeff's royalties from The Whale were secretly donated to a North Atlantic anti-whaling charity, maybe he wanted its words to be less political and instead open to interpretation, being a peaceful protest rather than a more in-your-face type statement?

[unomusette]

Speaking of spoken word bits, did Jeff write the intro and outro to Eldorado ("The dreamer, the unwoken fool")?

[queenofthehours]

I've never really thought about Jeff and typically "lovey-dovey" lyrics. He has written some love songs such as 'Need Her Love' which did take me a while to get into because I don't normally like love songs. But Jeff has such an individual way with words (see anything by the Idle Race) that he can take an idea that's been done to death and create something new, his own spin.

The most emotional songs for me are songs like 'One Summer Dream' and 'Shangri La' which have melodies a lesser writer would have turned into a sickly love song. Typically writers believe that "emotional" songs have to be about love but Jeff, in many of his songs, proves this is quite untrue. This is why I adore him.

'MBS' is his most famous hit and that's not about love while other writers' most famous tracks are 99% about love. And many of those writers would probably be writing those songs just to get hits and probably never even felt those exact emotions. With Jeff though I believe all the words he writes are true although in a few songs he might resort to "typical" lyrics in order to get something recorded as he said himself writing the words isn't his favourite.

I'd say 'Telephone Line' is Jeff's Official Love Song which is why I never used to enjoy it much until I saw it live. Now I appreciate it for the melody because that carries more emotion than any words ever could.