Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds is a 1978 progressive rock concept album by Jeff Wayne and others, retelling the story of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.

The War of the Worlds stars Richard Burton as the narrator-protagonist, Justin Hayward (of The Moody Blues), Phil Lynott, Julie Covington, David Essex and Chris Thompson.

"Forever Autumn", "The Eve of the War", "Thunder Child", and "The Spirit of Man" are the most recognised individual songs on the album. "Forever Autumn" was a UK Top 5 single, sung by Justin Hayward. The album itself spent 290 weeks in the UK album charts. It was in the top 10 in 22 countries and reached #1 in 11 countries.

Most of the lyrics on the album were written by former Elton John lyricist Gary Osborne.

The album was one of the first recorded on 48 tracks , by syncing two 24 track Studer 80s together at Advision Studio's on Gosfield Street in London. It was engineered by Geoff Young, who is often the unsung hero of the recordings, although they were using 48 tracks they were only using a 16 track desk! (George Michael discovered Geoff's genius and recorded 'Last Christmas' and 'Careless Whisper' in the same studio and on the same equipment.)

The repetition of "Ulla!", the cry made by the Martians, and certain musical refrains throughout the musical act as leitmotifs.

The official album comes with several paintings by Peter Goodfellow, Geoff Taylor and Michael Trim that help to illustrate the story from beginning to end.

The track-list for the audio file you are listening to is as follows:

01 - The Eve of the War
02 - Horsell Common and the Heat Ray
03 - Forever Autumn
04 - The Fighting Machine
05 - Thunderchild
06 - The Red Weed
07 - The Spirit of Man
08 - Dead London
09 - Brave New World
10 - The Spirit of Man (2007 Mix)