Songoftheday 9/21/14 - Somebody told her that there was a place like heaven across the water on a 747...

Electric Light Orchestra - "Calling America"
from the album Balance Of Power (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7

Today's Song of the Day comes from the symphonic rock act Electric Light Orchestra, who were still chugging along in the 80's after a very successful 70's, and last scored a top-20 pop hit in 1983 with "Rock N Roll Is King". However, as drummer Barry Bevan was moonlighting with Black Sabbath and leader Jeff Lynne was working under his own name with other ELO-mate keyboardist Richard Tandy, they had to be pushed by their label to make a contract-fulfilling album before splitting up. That set, Balance Of Power, dropped their signature string section in favor of more synthesizers, and that resulted in something more in tune with the easy-listening early-80s, like the Beach Boys trying to record Limahl's "Neverending Story". The video, of course, was filmed in Paris...

"Calling America" became ELO's so-far latest top-40 pop hit in April of 1986. The single also crossed over to the Mainstream Rock (#22) and the Adult Contemporary (#20) radio charts in Billboard magazine. While a couple more tracks from the album were minor hits in the UK, it would be the last showing for ELO on any chart in America.

The band would split after that, with Lynne going on to produce various rock acts and be a part of the Traveling Wilburys "supergroup" with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, while Bevan would for a time record under the moniker ELO Part II, which had a #60 hit in the UK with "Honest Men". In 2001 Lynne and Tandy would reform the Electric Light Orchestra (without Bevan this time), and release the album Zoom, which made the albums chart but failed to place any singles on the radio or sales chart. Most recenty, a previously unreleased track from the 70s, "Surrender", popped on to the UK chart at #81 in 2006, and they have been on and of performing since.

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and here's ELO miming their way through an American Bandstand appearance...

Up Tomorrow: A 'smackeroo' of a #1 hit.