So you liked Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO so much that one album wasn’t enough for you? Rest easy – there’s an accompanying single whose two songs were not featured on that album, and they’re very worthy of your attention.
As noted in the earlier review of Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, the song choices on the album span nearly the entire ELO repertoire; with few exceptions, nearly every album is represented. This single expands that further, with one cover song each from the Xanadu soundtrack and from 2015‘s comeback album Alone In The Universe. “I’m Alive”, the first ELO song one hears in 1980‘s movie musical Xanadu, has always been a criminally underrated entry in the band’s history of hit singles, boasting some of ELO’s most soaring harmonies and lyrics that are just relentlessly sunny and positive. Hatfield’s reading of the song takes it into a decidedly acoustic direction, apart from the synth solo being taken over by electric guitar here, but the harmonies are kept delightfully intact. With every listen, the same thought keeps occurring: “this didn’t make the album!?”
“When I Was A Boy”, the lead single from the 2015 album that marked Jeff Lynne staking his legal claim to the ELO legacy, is a more sedate number that started out in more acoustic, less synthetic territory, but Hatfield still does it justice, delivering a very nice interpretation of the song without worrying about gender-bending the lyrics at all. If anything, she layers more harmonies onto each successive verse and chorus than existed in the original song, and the result is a thing of beauty.
If Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO seemed too short, these two songs make up for it, and I have no regrets on the purchase price. A good ELO cover done well is a wonderful thing. Two of them? That’s two wonderful things.
- I’m Alive (3:33)
- When I Was A Boy (3:47)
Released by: American Laundromat Records
Release date: November 16, 2023
Total running time: 7:20
