Juliana Hatfield Announces New Covers Album Sings ELO for November 2023 Release and Shares Cover of “Don’t Bring Me Down”

American Laundromat Records has announced the third installment from Juliana Hatfield’s covers series with the release of “Don’t Bring Me Down,” which is  the first single from Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO.

In the press release Hatfield describes the creative process of covering “Don’t Bring Me Down.”

“ELO’s ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ is such a solid construction that trying to rework it initially felt like taking a sledgehammer to concrete. I didn’t worry about matching all the original’s exact sounds and parts, and we even dared a few cymbal crashes (the ELO version has one famously unchanging drum loop–no crashes—from start to finish). This is not a radical reinvention but it is a little more bubbly.”

Also in the following statement Hatfield mentions how ELO’s music has challenged her to create songs in her own way.

“ELO songs were always coming on the radio when I was growing up. They were a reliable source of pleasure and fascination. With this album of covers I wanted to get my hands deep into some of the massive ‘70’s hits but I am also shining a light on some of the later work… My task was to try and break all the things down and reconstruct them subtly until they felt like mine.”