Secret Messages

• Track Listing

Double vinyl LP pressing in gatefold sleeve including digital download.. Secret Messages is the 10th studio album by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), released in 1983 on Jet Records. The record was originally going to be a double album, but this plan was thwarted by Jet's distributor, CBS Records, claiming that producing a double vinyl album would be too expensive; as a result, leader Jeff Lynne would have to reduce it to a single album. It was the last ELO album with bass guitarist Kelly Groucutt, conductor Louis Clark and real stringed instruments, and the last ELO album to be released on the Jet label. Secret Messages, as it's title suggests, is littered with hidden messages in the form of back-masking, some obvious and others less so. This was Jeff Lynne's second tongue-in-cheek response to allegations of hidden Satanic messages in earlier Electric Light Orchestra LPs by Christian fundamentalists, which led up to American congressional hearings in the early 1980s.

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