Secret Messages
| Secret Messages | |||||
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| Studio album by Electric Light Orchestra | |||||
| Released | 5 June 1983 | ||||
| Recorded | December 1982 – February 1983 Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum |
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| Genre | Rock, pop rock, art rock | ||||
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| Producer | Jeff Lynne | ||||
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| Singles from Secret Messages | |||||
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Popmatters | (Favourable) |
| Q | |
Secret Messages is the tenth studio album by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), released in 1983 through Jet Records. 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 Jet Records. It was also the final ELO studio album to become a worldwide top 40 hit upon release.
The record was originally planned to be a double album, but was thwarted by Jet's distributor, CBS Records, claiming that producing a double vinyl album would be too expensive, and as a result, leader Jeff Lynne had to reduce it to a single album. This version of the album was digitally recorded and was to have been ELO's first compact disc. Six of the songs from the intended double album appeared as B-sides and reappeared on the Afterglow box set in 1990, including a string-laden eight-minute long tribute to the band's home town (Birmingham) entitled "Hello My Old Friend". Some of the tracks reappeared on the 2001 re-issue of the album. "Endless Lies", which had been altered for its inclusion on the subsequently-released Balance of Power album, appears in its original 1983 form on the 2001 remaster of this album.
Secret Messages, as its title suggests, was littered with hidden messages in the form of backmasking, 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 early 1980s American congressional hearings (a similar response had been made by Lynne on the Face the Music album, during the intro to the "Fire on High" track). In Britain, the back cover of Secret Messages has a mock warning about the hidden messages. Word of the album's impending release in the United States caused enough of a furore to cause CBS Records to delete the cover blurb there.
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