The Year In Music: 12th April

Mr Blue Sky, Electric Light Orchestra (1978)

Bin day. Dreadful night with the cold that will not die. Don’t want to go out. Want to stay in. Get things done. Then opening the back door….the blast of it. Sunshine. Scorching light. The blue stretching and stretching and stretching and stretching.

I love that one of the greatest, sweetest, bounciest songs about the miracle of bright weather is powered along by a man called Beverley Bevan thwacking the side of a fire extinguisher before its chorus launches itself into space. Why would you want to extinguish this? ELO’s Mr Blue Sky partly succeeds thanks to its insanely insistent regular four-to-the-floor rhythm, hammering its message home into your head, mixed up with those lovely, McCartney-like melodic movements, Jeff Lynne’s boy-next-door vocals, and a guitar sound warmer than a soothing cup of tea after a difficult day.