Time is the ninth studio album by English rock band Electric Light Orchestra (credited as ELO), released in July 1981 on Jet Records.

Time is a work of synth-pop that combines elements from 1950s music, new wave, reggae, rockabilly, the Beatles, Phil Spector and the Shadows.

[4] Writing for PopMatters, Kevin Mathews says that the album reflects Lynne's absorption in the UK synth-pop sound popularised by contemporary artists such as Gary Numan, OMD and the Human League.

[citation needed] Three additional songs written in the album's context were recorded, but left off the release: "The Bouncer", "When Time Stood Still" and "Julie Don’t Live Here".

Walking down the same street from a hundred years before, he is dismayed by the plastic flowers and ivory towers which have grown on top of it ("The Way Life's Meant to Be").

[2] Noel Coppage of Stereo Review found the band "has slimmed down some and grown out of its twin-electric-cello phase, but it can still give you a case of the grandiosities.

You'll find great sweeps of melody and plenty of high and low and loud and soft sounds for your expensive hi-fi equipment to chew on.

"[12] Coppage remarked of the album's concept: "Ironically, all he [the narrator] does the whole time is whine about how he misses good old 1981 and the girl he left back there.

'"[12] Deborah Frost of Rolling Stone called the storytelling a "superfluous ... thematic conceit" and said that, with the reliance on synthesised sounds, "If ELO's not careful, they're going to end up becoming the kind of cheese that squirts out of an aerosol can.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the 1960s science fiction television show Star Trek, "yet as long as Jeff Lynne's future-vision Beatlemania comes in near-perfect Top Forty spurts, why moan?

"[18] Frank Conte of The Boston Globe opined: "Time doesn't stick together well as a concept but as far as pop sensibilities are concerned, ELO has no worries.

"[21] In his retrospective review for PopMatters, Kevin Mathews says that, despite Lynne's decision to embrace a new, synth-pop sound, "In essence … Time remained a quintessential ELO album."

"[22] Writing in The Guardian, Beaumont listed "Twilight" as the 10th best song of ELO's career "for its space-age cathedral sizzle, warp-speed pacing and the sort of brazen futuristic hooklines that proved they gave that Flash Gordon gig to the wrong band".

[23] The Independent ranked Time as 17th on their list of 20 most underrated albums, with Beaumont writing that "its sonics would more quickly become a blueprint for Eighties synthpop and inspire the likes of Daft Punk, Grandaddy and Ladyhawke.

The song was later featured in "Join the Coffee Achievers",[26] a 2008 Honda Accord car ad campaign,[27] and included in the 2011 Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts film Larry Crowne.