Livin' Thing

The second track on side two of A New World Record, written and produced by Jeff Lynne and recorded at Musicland in Munich in July 1976. Patti Quatro sang uncredited on the backing vocals, most clearly on the higher and higher refrain, and Bev Bevan singled out Mik Kaminski's violin intro and solo. Lynne has said the song works because of an augmented chord, a G augmented that brings tension and uplift, placed just before the refrain.

In Lynne's words, "The song is just about love, love being a living thing." He told Hi-Fi News in 2014 that the first spark was a bout of food poisoning on holiday, and joked that he would not want anyone to think it was about a bad paella. A rumour that it carries an anti-abortion message has followed it, but Lynne said it is about losing love.

Afterlife

Issued as a single on 29 October 1976, backed with Fire On High in Britain and Ma-Ma-Ma Belle in America, it reached four in the UK, then the band's highest British placing, and 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, and went to number one in South Africa. It later went platinum in Britain. Paul Thomas Anderson used it for the final scene and end credits of Boogie Nights (1997). Lynne said no at first and agreed after watching a screening with the director. A Volkswagen Tiguan advertisement in 2017 took it to number two on Billboard's TV commercials chart, its first Billboard chart entry in 40 years. Q named it the top guilty pleasure single in 2006, and Stereogum called it the hypnotic centerpiece of the album. PFR and the Beautiful South have covered it, and Lynne re-recorded it in 2012.

ELO played it from January 1977 until the 2001 Zoom taping, more than two hundred times, and Jeff Lynne's ELO kept it in the set from Hyde Park in 2014 to Manchester in July 2025. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official video, which carries the original 1976 recording.