I’m so disappointed googling for more info that the covers album is called “Long Wave” and not “Long Wave Big Trilby” which is a great name for a Jeff Lynne album. Shame.
Sorry, an 'on' fell out in an edit and by the time I noticed it was too late to fix it!
New Order have a bit of a history with this too, though the re-recordings are usually for artistic reasons (or Bernard's perfectionism) than for any commercial gain. It started with their first single Ceremony, which was initially recorded in March 1981 when they were a three-piece and
issued in a green and gold sleeve. Later that year Gillian joined the band, and Ceremony was re-recorded in September as a four piece and
issued in a blue and white sleeve and this became the 'default' version of the song for compilations (the two releases also had slightly different takes of the B-side In A Lonely Place, but these both dated to the original March recording session).
As mentioned in the recent 'Best Compilations' thread, they re-recorded Temptation and Confusion for Substance in 1987, supposedly because by then John Robie had taught Bernard about singing in the right key for his voice so they redid them in the way they were played live at the time.
Temptation (1982 12")
1987 re-recordingConfusion (1983 12", co-written and produced by Arthur Baker)
1987 re-recording (I actually prefer the 1987 version of Confusion - the original is too slow)
Temptation then got
re-recorded again in 1998 for use in the Manchester Commonweath Games handover ceremony in 1998. It was eventually released on the Retro boxset in 2002
Bernard also recorded a new vocal take for the Blue Monday 88 remix, but John Potoker and Quincy Jones didn't like it, so they used the original. However when the 'The Best Of...' compilation and 'Rest of...' remix albums were being put together in 1994/95 (which also saw new versions of 1963 and Low Life cast-off Let's Go being recorded), new remixes of Blue Monday were commissioned, and some of these ended up using the 1988 vocal take (and
portions of the vocal from the demo for the aborted Sunkist ad, which were recorded at the same session).