“Don’t Bring Me Down” by Electric Light Orchestra

Electric Light Orchestra, is known as ELO, is a band of English rockers who are still technically extant to this day. However, their heyday dates back to the late 1970s, i.e. the decade in which the group first came out. And concerning their moniker, to note this band was originally an ‘orchestra’, consisting of horns, violinists, cellists and string bassists. In fact, “Don’t Bring Me Down” is reportedly the first song ELO dropped after deciding to do away with the string section.

Throughout the years, this act has been primarily held down by frontman and co-founder Jeff Lynne alongside multi-instrumentalist Richard Tandy, who are the two individuals keeping the ELO brand alive into the 2020s. 

Along the way they had been joined by a number of musicians. And when Jet Records dropped this song on 1 June 1979, as the closing track on the band’s album “Discovery”, those would have been drummer Bev Bevan and bassist Kelly Groucutt (1945-2009). Lynn, Tandy and Groucutt laid down their contributions to “Don’t Bring Me Down” live, while the drumming, as rendered by Bevan, was looped.

Success of “Don’t Bring Me Down”

To note, Columbia Records also backed the release of “Discovery” in the United States. And as for “Don’t Bring Me Down”, the third single from the project, it was written and produced exclusively by Jeff Lynne. 

In fact Jeff later featured his own rendition of this song on his 2012 compilation album “Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra”.

This track serves as a major entry in ELO’s discography, as peaking at number 4, it marks the highest any of their songs ever scored on the US Hot 100, in addition to being certified double-platinum by the RIAA. 

Moreover, this track reached the peak of Canada Top Singles and third place on the UK Singles Chart, thus marking ELO’s highest non-collaborative entry on that list also. (The following year they participated on “Xanadu” alongside Olivia Newton-John, a song that proceeded to top the UK Singles Chart.) 

Additionally, this tune earned Lynne a BMI Million-Air award in 2007, in recognition of having been played on the radio over 2 million times, and “Don’t Bring Me Down” has a notable history in conjunction with NASA.

The Lyrics

All lyrics considered, what we are dealing with here is a guy who has found himself in the unenviable position of his sweetheart having developed into the type of lady who’d rather be out chillin with her “fancy friends” than proving herself dedicated to their romance. 

So the wording of “Don’t Bring Me Down” revolves around the type of ruminations you would expect in that regard. For instance, Jeff is obviously perturbed about the situation. It can also be deemed that he strongly suspects that the addressee, his aforementioned sweetheart, is seeing other guys but, as implied in the fourth verse, is not being honest about it, i.e. cheating. 

And by the time all is said and done, his hopelessness is replaced with a sentiment of vengeance, as in looking forward to the day when the addressee’s unethical romantic exploits come back to bite her in the ass. 

But even in closing, i.e. during the sixth and final verse, Jeff lets it be known that despite his lady more or less making him feel like crap, he’s too smitten to actually leave her. And that then brings us back to the titular phrase which, in context, serves as his plea that she should be sensitive to what her actions are putting him through instead of seemingly going about her business as if he doesn’t exist.

“Don’t bring me down
No, no, no, no, no
Ooh-ooh-hoo
I’ll tell you once more before I get off the floor
Don’t bring me down”

The Origin of “Groos”

And just to point out as a side note, the addressee’s name is not “groos”, as implied in the post-chorus, nor is that the name of any of the people involved in this story. In fact that term is not actually a word but rather a placeholder Lynne inserted into the lyrics, and he didn’t take it out upon eventually learning that such is how you pronounce “greetings” in Germany. 

But that said, since this is rather an English-language song, most listeners are not aware of that terminology and commonly misheard “groos” as ‘Bruce’, which is something that Jeff has picked up on during his live performances on “Don’t Bring Me Down”.