"Don't bring me down" was the 9th (and final) track on ELO's 8th studio album. It reached
Number 1 in Canada
Number 2 in Austria and Switzerland
Number 3 in The United Kingdom
Number 4 in the USA
Number 5 in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands
Number 6 in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland
Fun Facts 1 This was the first ELO song that did not use strings. After recording it, they fired their string section, leaving four members in the band.
2 Jeff Lynne wrote this song late in the sessions for the Discovery album. He came up with the track by looping the drums from a song he recorded earlier in the session, then coming up with more music on the piano. The words came last, as Lynne put together some lyrics about a girl who thinks she's too good for the guy she's with.
3 As a little joke, Lynne put a count-in at the beginning of the song, even though there was nobody he was counting in.
4. This turned out to be a good theme song for astronauts enjoying their time in space. The song was played to astronauts on the Space Shuttle Columbia as their wake up call on July 6, 1996 - they were in flight longer than expected because of bad weather on the ground. ELO's record company also tried to tie in the song with the Skylab space station, which crashed to Earth on July 11, 1979 after six years in space. They placed ads in trade magazines promoting the new single "Don't Bring Me Down" by dedicating it to Skylab.
5 This song appears in the 2006 Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters," and in the 2012 Family Guy episode "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" It has also been used in these films:I Can Only Imagine (2018)Super 8 (2011)College Road Trip (2008)The In-Laws (2003)Donnie Brasco (1997) and It was also used in the trailer for the 2017 film The Emoji Movie. In 2020, this was used in a Peloton commercial where a dad tries to stay motivated using the fitness bike.
