I'm actually increasingly finding "Hold On Tight" to be among ELO's finest moments, period -- this is the effect car ads have, I imagine.
There's just so much going on -- it's like ELO's career is crammed into 3:06. It begins, of course, with one of Jeff Lynne's most infectious melodies, in a career filled with a shocking number of them. There's the guitar/big beat rave up (tweaked a bit to the 80s), and the incredibly spot-on Jerry Lee Lewis vocals and boogie-woogie piano. But it's the change in the second verse of the vocal treatment from slapback to patented ELO double-tracked, close-mic lead and tight harmony vox where suddenly you realize you're not in Memphis anymore. By the bridge "When you get so down..." it almost doesn't even sound like a Fifties pastiche but some odd studio creation that exists entirely out of time, confirmed by the last two verses (the first of which is bizarrely in French) where the vocals are all ensemble. As the final notes echo into the distance, it's almost as if we're listening to what was very consciously the Last Great ELO single.
Convince me I'm wrong.
― Naive Teen Idol, Monday, 1 October 2007 15:35 (seventeen years ago)