Time (Electric Light Orchestra album)

Background and recording

Time follows the albums Discovery (1979), which excised the band's string section, and Xanadu (1980), a soundtrack to the musical film of the same name which was met with a mixed reception. With Time, bandleader Jeff Lynne emphasized electronics over the band's orchestra, writing a collection of songs with a theme that focused on time travel and civilization in the year 2095. The album's music style draws from the 1950s, new wave, reggae, rockabilly, and artists like the Beatles, Phil Spector, and the Shadows. Time was recorded mainly at Musicland Studios in Munich, Germany with some exceptions at Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. Three additional songs written in the album's context were recorded, but left off the album, instead being released as B-sides of later singles ("Bouncer", "When Time Stood Still" and "Julie Don’t Live Here").

Concept and storyline

In 1981, a man drifts into a state of twilight ("Twilight"), where he appears to have entered the year 2095, meets an android woman ("Yours Truly, 2095"), and reflects on the 1980s, "back when things were so uncomplicated" ("Ticket to the Moon"). Walking down the same street from a hundred years before, he is dismayed by the plastic ivory towers which have grown on top of it ("The Way Life's Meant to Be"). As he remains in this future period, he looks out his window depressed, watching the world go by ("Rain Is Falling"). He attempts to send a letter in the form of a dream to his girlfriend in the past, but fails ("From the End of the World").

When asked whether the man's experiences had been a dream all along, Lynne responded: "This is what I'd like to know, because it's baffled me since I wrote it, if he has actually gone [to the future], or if he's just thinking about it. ... It could be real, or it could be a dream... I'm not sure. I'd rather not say, because I don't know either. I'm supposed to, but I don't."

Other interpretations

Author Adam Roberts calls Time a "future-set rock opera". According to The Guardian, it is a concept album about a man who is abducted to the year 2095, while the web publication Rockol and magazine Stereo Review write that Time is about a man who becomes trapped in the future. The News & Advance's Ben Cates says it "tells the story of a man living in the year 2095 who glimpses enough of the future to know that he wants to get back to the 1980s."

PopMatters' Kevin Mathews writes: "Like Eldorado, Time contained a prologue and an epilogue ... Although there is hardly any plot to thread the various songs together, the theme remains largely intact. ... they embellish, rather than engage." A recurring line which appears in the album's epilogue is: "though you ride on the wheels of tomorrow, you still wander the fields of your sorrow". Rockol believes that the protagonist revisits the place he once lived only to find that it has become unrecognisable ("The Way Life's Meant to Be"). Afterward, he hopes that he may be able to return home with a time machine, "but with all their great inventions and their good intentions, here I stay" ("Rain Is Falling"). Following his final attempt to return to the past, the protagonist is invited to "hold on" ("Hold On Tight").

Release and reception

The album reached number 1 in the UK Albums Chart, maintaining the position for two weeks. Mathews wrote that ELO fans were "shocked with the results". Upon release, the magazine Stereo Review wrote that the band "has slimmed down some and grown out of its twin-electric-cello phase, but it can still give you a case of the grandiosities. You'll find great sweeps of melody and plenty of high and low and loud and soft sounds for your expensive hi-fi equipment to chew on". On the album's concept: "Ironically, all he [the narrator] does the whole time is whine about how he misses good old 1981 and the girl he left back there. You want to shake him by the shoulders and say, 'Man, have you no sense of adventure?'" Rolling Stone's Deborah Frost called the storytelling a "superfluous ... thematic conceit", describing the album as a cross between the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and the science fiction television show Star Trek (1966–69), "yet as long as Jeff Lynne's future-vision Beatlemania comes in near-perfect Top Forty spurts, why moan?"

In Mathews' retrospective review, he commented: "Lynne’s melodic craft, technical expertise, production skills and encyclopaedic pop authority made Time a treasure for all true connoisseurs of classic pop music ... Taking his cue from the burgeoning synth-pop scene in the UK (e.g. Gary Numan, OMD, Human League, etc.), Lynne joined the cause. ... In essence though, Time remained a quintessential ELO album." The Quietus' Joseph Stannard said that Time is a "very good album indeed", highlighting "Twilight" as "the most exciting song ever recorded ... Pulsating, momentous, charged with purpose and overstuffed with hooks, counter-hooks, sub-hooks and semi-hooks, 'Twilight' makes being abducted by time travellers sound like the most fun you can have." The Guardian's Mark Beaumont listed "Twilight" as the 10th best song of ELO's career "for its space-age cathedral sizzle, warp-speed pacing and the sort of brazen futuristic hooklines that proved they gave that Flash Gordon gig to the wrong band". AllMusic's James Chrispell assessed the album as less-than-great formulaic work by ELO, noting a resemblance to work by the Alan Parsons Project and Wings rather than Lynne's "fascination with Pepper-era Beatles".

Legacy

According to the book The Time Traveler's Almanac, Time is the first major concept album devoted entirely to time travel. Rockol states that while Time is not one of the most celebrated ELO albums, it has attracted a cult following from those interested in retrofuturism. Among the album's "unexpected" fans are the Flaming Lips and Daft Punk.

In popular culture

In an early 1980s Rolling Stone magazine interview, Steve Winwood said that ELO's Time had influenced him. Ladyhawke has stated that ELO's Time is one of her five favourite albums.

In 1983, the track "Twilight" become popularly known for its use in the animated short Daicon IV Opening Animation, created for the Nihon SF Taikai, an annual science fiction convention held in Japan. In 1998, Cher sampled a synth sound from "Prologue" and "Epilogue" at the beginning of her number 1 hit single "Believe". The song "Hold On Tight" was featured in a Coffee Achievers ad campaign.

Track listing

All tracks written by Jeff Lynne.

ELO

Additional personnel