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Post by Lucyblue on Jul 4, 2022 20:26:12 GMT
I didn't mean for it to be so robust a debate but the passion on display is great to see and so many posts are helpful. Thank you. I've studied everything from Gershwin to Eminem in my 20th century composers to find out who made popular music and why they were so popular. The focus being on how they constructed their songs and what exactly made their compositions so appealing. The Beatles obviously were huge as they basically took the songwriting rulebook from before them and rather than throwing it out, re-wrote it. But in didn't end in 1970. That's where I've chosen to focus on Jeff Lynne. One could keep going with McCartney, be bold with Kraftwerk, champion the singer-songwriter in Joni Mitchell or indeed the pop perfection of Abba. Some of you have and you've all got a point. All of those acts continued to advance music composition in their own way. Thousands have done my course and I just wanted to be different and on hearing ELO I think I can and will justify it. To explain where I'm coming from, firstly lyrics mean nothing - I'm not considering their worth so Dylan and the likes are out and Joni will suffer. It is all about the music sadly even though I appreciate a great song contains both great music and great lyrics. For my purpose, it is purely song construction. One of my colleagues considers "Autobahn" by Kraftwerk the next great leap in music after The Beatles. He will argue that point. Why won't I? Yes they composed on purely machines but their songs can still be written down musically and they are unremarkable as compositions. It is a case of "sound" for them as opposed to composition in my ears and the course is about composition. Joni Mitchell basically went with her own chords as far as I'm aware and consistently used non-regular tuning - I hope I am right on this. This did make her unique and someone who advanced 20th century music. That said, her commercial impact was limited and her career similarly so. I admire Joni Mitchell but she didn't have a big enough following nor a truly tangible effect on pop music to make a significant difference in my opinion - she became an outsider who had done wonderful things but that was about it. Abba. Well they certainly influenced the zeitgeist and were in your face. Two good female singers belting out fantastic pop melody after fantastic melody...an all time great yeah? Yeah. They were. Many of my peers will write of Abba and this year, with their "Abbatar" tour, they will be huge. Dig deep though and how great were they? "The Winner Takes It All" is 3 chords, as are many of their songs. I'm not doubting they're catchiness but Benny poured a lot of sugar upon what were fairly simple songs by Abba. Try looking at an Abba songbook and it's like the Wizard has somehow been revealed from behind the curtain...they're actually really simple songs with great production and great performances. Good band though. Now onto ELO and Jeff Lynne. I saw one poster was amazed I'd championed "Twilight". I get it, it was a failed single. I've actually based my whole thesis on why "Twilight" is so good and evidence as to why Jeff Lynne is a significant 20th century composer. I could go into why it contains more basic chords than "The Winner Takes It All" (3 chords) and "Super Trouper" (4 chords) put together. I could and have demonstrated that it has 7...individual separate melodies within the one piece. I could point out it changes tempo twice, I could point out a lot of things that make it truly fantastic. For it is. It's an astonishing piece of music. It's why I even posted here in the first place. Anyhow, Thanks for all your opinions, Luce.
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Post by Lucyblue on Jul 4, 2022 20:36:52 GMT
As a part of my PhD in music I've been focusing on ELO and Jeff Lynne. I'm arguing (to an extent) that he contributed significantly to late 20th Century Music in music composition and structure. Bad timing perhaps as Paul McCartney is all over the news due to Glastonbury and the key example. I wished to do something different although I still champion McCartney to a large extent, I cite Jeff Lynne as an alternative to Wings when continuing a certain sound and who's muse "died out later". Sorry but I believe all pop composers have a life-span and try to explain why. I've listened to every Idle Race/Electric Light Orchestra/ELO/ELO2/Jeff Lynne/Jeff Lynne's ELO album over the last few months and I've read your forum in-depth. It's been a rollercoaster of great music and opinion. I've read all the polls and all the opinions given. They're great, thanks. I've been on various music sites and spoken to music fans in general. In my view as an amateur musicologist and researcher I've reached the following opinion: "Twilight" from "Time" is the greatest composition Jeff Lynne has written. "All Over The World" is the most popular composition Jeff Lynne has written. The first is simply my analysis as a music student as it is off the scale in complexity for a pop song and then some. Most popular was thought to be "Mr Blue Sky" but since lock-down that appears to have changed. I'd appreciate your opinion on either of these two as fans in case I am missing something. I love the likes of "Fire On High" but it's 3 chords really. Much like most of Pink Floyd. Thanks, Luce. This is an excellent post, Luce. I applaud anyone who wants to write about Jeff's music at the Ph.D. level. I have one additional question, since at the Ph.D. level students generally articulate the strengths and weaknesses of the chosen topic. So my question is: What weaknesses have you identified in Jeff's compositions?
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Post by Lucyblue on Jul 4, 2022 20:42:42 GMT
That's a great question.
And there's one glaring answer to it.
Jeff constantly made musical references to the 50's in his songs, even when ELO were pushing the boundaries in the 70's.
The doo-woop in Telephone Line, Shangri La etc. Did it make them better songs or did they suffer because of it? I'd suggest the latter.
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Post by Helmut83 on Jul 5, 2022 9:27:04 GMT
To me that doesn't have relevance. Those were lyrical references, not musical. The same melody line that is first filled with "doo wop, doo be doo doo wop" is later on filled with "blue days, black nights" and nothing changes. When the question is about Jeff's compositions I think we are talking about music first and foremost.
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Post by nickheynes on Jul 6, 2022 14:43:22 GMT
To me that doesn't have relevance. Those were lyrical references, not musical. The same melody line that is first filled with "doo wop, doo be doo doo wop" is later on filled with "blue days, black nights" and nothing changes. When the question is about Jeff's compositions I think we are talking about music first and foremost. I think you're right Helmut. If I could add my two pennies worth , I have to say that Jeff's lyrics have never affected me emotionally. I have been affected emotionally by seeing him play live but that wasn't the songs themselves, It was more a combination of an awful lot of things. The atmosphere, the setting, The fact that I was only feet away from my musical hero. That I was with other fans etc. I love his songs. But none of them have brought me the joy or made me so desperately sad for 3 minutes or so that some other artists songs have. I believe that Jeff himself often dismisses his lyrics and I find that difficult to understand. If he means what he is singing when he sings "blue days , black nights" I need to feel it too. I don't need the know the nitty gritty, just what he was feeling at the time. And yes I know he was feeling "blue". That's not enough lol! McCartney is the same for me. He hides too well for me to "get it in the feels" I've said this before but Abba's "Slipping through my fingers" leaves me a wreck. I can relate totally to that song. I cant relate to Jeff's on an emotional level. I know he writes autobiographical songs but I find the meaning behind his songs is often too well hidden for me. Or that I haven't experienced the same things. Maybe I need a clearer signpost , I don't know! On a footnote I'm not saying that I should "feel" every song. That'd be exhausting! Only ones that I suspect I should be feeling. Does any of that make any sense at all?!
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Post by ShardEnder on Jul 6, 2022 16:53:19 GMT
Telephone Line is definitely a good place to start an examination of what I've always considered one of Jeff's relative weaknesses as a writer, and that was its early precedent of featuring a descending chord pattern during the verses. In later years, Jeff took that same basic cascading idea and ran with it, almost to the point of self-parody once he became "producer to the stars" in the mid-1980s. You hear a very particular falling piano line in so many of his outside productions (perhaps most notably You Got It and Let It Shine), and it's probably no coincidence that he made the conscious decision to end Secret Messages - both the song and album - with a similar downward motif. As I've mentioned before, that project was originally intended to be ELO's swansong, and Hello My Old Friend serves as a clear musical bookend to 10538 Overture, itself heavily indebted to the equally cacophonous ending of I Am The Walrus, in turn calling back to Roy's initial MO for what began life as an extension of The Move. Between this little trick, his now-signature drum sound and what he likes to call naughty chords, Jeff's method isn't overly complex, yet it's somehow become inimitable. A few have admittedly come very close, so why is it that not even former bandmates seem capable of capturing the same magic? I certainly have my criticisms, but I also welcome the opportunity to see Jeff studied as a craftsman of the highest level.
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Post by lawrev on Jul 6, 2022 21:49:35 GMT
The cascading piano and guitar chords (often with Ovation guitars) was part of Jeff's sonic signature after ELO. It became so predictable that I had an 80% chance of picking it out on a new Jeff Lynne production, especially on mid-tempo quasi-rockers. And his lyrics were often weak, but then again, he admitted that he wrote the lyrics last during the vast majority of ELO's tunes.
I can't speak for the former bandmates, but I do think that the sonic signature is unique to Jeff. I don't consider the sonic signature to be genius or brilliant - just Jeff. As we have discussed on the ELO threads here and on the Hoffman Forums, Jeff's sonic signature has *largely* (not 100%) stayed static since 1987.
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Post by pelo on Jul 9, 2022 5:05:34 GMT
I can't speak for the former bandmates, but I do think that the sonic signature is unique to Jeff. I don't consider the sonic signature to be genius or brilliant - just Jeff. As we have discussed on the ELO threads here and on the Hoffman Forums, Jeff's sonic signature has *largely* (not 100%) stayed static since 1987. A drastic simplification, IMHO. Of course, there is no denying that there is a certain Jeff Lynne sound, but if you compare say Regina Spektor's "Far" to the Wilbury era, there are lots of differences in terms of sound. Added to that, by the late 1990ies, Lynne had embraced modern recording technology, using Pro Tools and stuff, which you can certainly hear to some degree. As early as the early Nineties, Jeff widened the scope of his sound as a producer. When he produced Wonderful Land for Hank Marvin, it definitely wssn't the very heavy, multi- layered sound of the Wilbury era. The same goes for McCartney's "Flaming Pie". And it's even more obvious if you analyse his work with Tom Petty: Does " Highway Companion" sound the same as " Full Moon Fever"? I don't think so.
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Post by lawrev on Jul 9, 2022 23:40:19 GMT
I can't speak for the former bandmates, but I do think that the sonic signature is unique to Jeff. I don't consider the sonic signature to be genius or brilliant - just Jeff. As we have discussed on the ELO threads here and on the Hoffman Forums, Jeff's sonic signature has *largely* (not 100%) stayed static since 1987. A drastic simplification, IMHO. Of course, there is no denying that there is a certain Jeff Lynne sound, but if you compare say Regina Spektor's "Far" to the Wilbury era, there are lots of differences in terms of sound. Added to that, by the late 1990ies, Lynne had embraced modern recording technology, using Pro Tools and stuff, which you can certainly hear to some degree. As early as the early Nineties, Jeff widened the scope of his sound as a producer. When he produced Wonderful Land for Hank Marvin, it definitely wssn't the very heavy, multi- layered sound of the Wilbury era. The same goes for McCartney's "Flaming Pie". And it's even more obvious if you analyse his work with Tom Petty: Does " Highway Companion" sound the same as " Full Moon Fever"? I don't think so. I do grant you that Highway Companion (2006, co-produced with Petty and Campbell) and Flaming Pie (1997, co-produced with Martin and McCartney) are his best post - Wilbury producing efforts. And they are different than the Wilbury or Harrison albums. But both HC and FP had strong willed co-producers, which meant that Jeff was not *completely* allowed to do what he would if left to his own devices. Maybe I am simplifying a bit, but by and large people recognize a Jeff Lynne produced song when they hear it (regardless of whether he is playing or singing on it).
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