The passing of a much-loved public figure always brings chills, and in 2022 they’ve been multiplying with a roll-call of fallen artists in danger of surpassing the notorious holocaust of 2016 for its callous celebrity cull.
But hell, Olivia Newton-John losing her lengthy protracted battle with cancer made for summer dreams ripped at the seams. Her death on August 8 prompted an inevitable outpouring of tributes across the world, moved not just by her music and movies, but also by her tireless efforts to raise money and awareness for breast cancer charities, following her own diagnosis of the disease in 1992.
With the voice of an angel and the strength of a tiger, there was an ageless quality to Livvy, which is why only she could get away with playing a teen in Grease when she was pushing 30. To the end, there was a youthful innocence and vulnerability that combined with a relentlessly sunny disposition meant that she always seemed to radiate a positive mental attitude, which undoubtedly shone through and helped her battle several bouts of ill health in her later years.
She wasn’t as old as Dame Edna or Clive James, the Aussie presenter who, spookily, ended out his days where Olivia started hers: the Anglian university city of Cambridge. But as the Bee Gees had begun performing before they emigrated Down Under (only living on the sunburned country for nine years), I regard Olivia Newton-John to be the first Australian of pop music in so many ways.
Olivia Newton-John was born to a German mother and Welsh father in Cambridgeshire on September 26, 1948 — the same day as Brooklyn Dreams’ Bruce Sudano, widower of another music icon lost to cancer, the much-missed Donna Summer. Both Summer and my mother were born a few weeks later in December of ’48.
Fast forward thirty years, and ONJ’s oeuvre reached a plateau after she was hired to play Rydell High good girl Sandy Olsson in the career-defining rock ’n’ roll revival, opposite John Travolta as Danny Zuko. The way I remember it, at some point in the summer of ’78 my parents purchased the Grease soundtrack album for my sister Stella and I as consolation for not getting in to see the movie at “the pictures” — i.e. the Studio cinema in Bletchley.
In other words, Mum and Dad didn’t much fancy joining the whopping never-before-seen queues which stretched all the way round the block to the leisure centre. Almost a half century later and a beautiful spirit has sailed, though the music goes on forever. In fact, when I visited them recently I could see that Ma and Pa still have the Grease LP in their glass doored stereo cabinet. Remember them?
Less than a year after I immigrated to the antipodean continent myself, I found myself living in Melbourne myself — not the South Side where Livvy grew up, but a little trendy suburb called Clifton Hill, which happened to be just ten minutes from the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre that’s done so much good in improving the lives of sufferers of this relentless disease through palliative care and pioneering treatments.
Since the 1990s, there was a shift away from her whirlwind career to focus on advocacy, though Olivia hadn’t abandoned music for good, thankfully. After they almost single-handedly resurrected the careers of the great divas Dusty Springfield and Liza Minnelli, ONJ put the feelers out to the Pet Shop Boys about a possible collaboration, but wary of being typecast as serial collaborators Tennant & Lowe put it on the “unlikely” pile. At least she was in exceptionally good company: the seminal synth duo rejected the overtures of a whole host of femme fatales looking to relight their fires, from Lulu and Annie Lennox to Debbie Harry and Donna Summer.
Shortly after I arrived in Australia, she came out of semi retirement and took part in a 2014 charity cover of I Touch Myself, the bold Blondie-ish paean to solosexual pleasure by Sydney combo Divinyls. Twelve months after the passing of the band’s Chrissy Amphlett to breast cancer, her lascivious headline-grabber had been poignantly adapted as an anthem for breast checks around the world.
That a song about wanking could be refashioned as a social ‘message’ for the benefit of humanity was yet another example of ONJ’s mission to make her mark on society in a positive way. Not for self-interest but because of a genuine desire to improve the lot of others.
With their myriad insecurities and pathological quests to keep pushing their ‘brand’, artistic types are generally a high maintenance breed. No one really knows celebrities, but if I was asked to name who I thought was the most genuine, generous and giving famous figure with remarkably little evidence of ego, there would be three: Dolly Parton, Kate Bush and Olivia Newton-John.
Going down a rabbit hole of interviews and footage in the days after her death, I realised what an incredibly unselfconscious and down to earth person she was — there was no side, no self-serving agenda. Not only is that rare for a star of her magnitude, but her contagious giggle that frequently punctuated her conversations was ample evidence that this was someone who loved life and loved people.
Whatever your musical tastes, it was impossible to dislike Olivia Newton-John; impossible not to be captivated by her in some way. Some may dismiss the music as bland or so middle of the road she may as well have had white stripes painted down the middle of her record sleeves, but I’ve yet to meet a person that had a bad word to say about Olivia the human being — and that’s probably because she was renowned for never saying anything bad about anyone else herself.
The funny thing about her recorded output is how surprisingly varied it is in all its cross-genre forms. Like her pal, the roller-skating closet Cliff Richard, Olivia might have been regarded as about as cool as a volcano, but as someone who grew up in the 1970s, the name Olivia Newton-John was an attractive indelible fixture, and not just as Sandy from Grease.
Look at her, she’s the stud-baiting, spandex-rocking stiletto queen that used to be Sandra Dee, a prim and proper prude even more wholesome than the white bread ONJ was unkindly compared to by her real-life critics. Of course, those extremes were dictated by the hammy cartoon plot of Grease, but Olivia had a strong narrative arc in her recording career, too.
First, she was the country-pop crossover queen who was less vain than Shania Twain but set a template for her anyway; then, a dance-pop princess who could well have been Melbourne‘s first proto-Kylie, except with a personality and a nice voice.
Finally, a mature balladeer leaning toward self-help material that befit the public struggles and inspirational tone of her life’s difficult last act. In the hands of a different artist, a lot of the material at the more soft rock/easy listening end of Olivia’s repertoire could be construed as cloying and twee. However, as a mirror to her own character, Newton-John exuded an incredible warmth and nuance thanks to her empathetic and clear-eyed vocal delivery.
So without further ado, for this specially extended Perfect 10 of lush Livvy songs, it’s time to get listicle. Because she was good. You know what I mean?
Feel your way…
Till You Say You'll Be Mine (1966)
Olivia Newton-John grew up singing, and by the time she was a teenager she was already performing on Aussie telly staples like Bandstand. As the prize for winning a talent competition on the series Sing, Sing, Sing in 1965, a 16 year-old Olivia was flown back to the motherland — slightly reluctantly — to record this Jackie DeShannon composition as her debut single, after which she became a high school dropout to pursue performing full-time.
The recording took place at Decca Studios in London’s West Hampstead, the famed venue for The Beatles’s failed auction and many of the Rolling Stones’ and David Bowie’s sixties sessions. The studios also happened to be next door to The Railway, my father’s local boozer for most of the decade, due to him living one street away. More on him later.
Streamable via Apple but not strangely YouTube, the song itself is a ragged Motown meets Phil Spector girl group confection (Olivia once recalled a review that said it “sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom”). The denseness of the pseudo-Wall of Sound production is key here, as Livvy’s clearly got her Ronnie on (that’ll be not Biggs or Barker but Ronnie Spector, Phil’s wife) as she apes the vocal stylings of the Ronettes’ frontwoman throughout: a combination of street toughness and tenderness, and a raw, unschooled power.
Released on 13 May 1966. the same week as the Stones’ Paint It Black and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Till You Say You’ll Be Mine was neither commercially nor critically successful and it didn’t trouble the charts the world over. The failure of her first 45 made it the only ONJ single released by Decca, and she wouldn’t release another solo record until this next beauty.
If Not For You (1971)
Marking the start of her 1970s country pop period, ONJ recorded Bob Dylan’s If Not For You as her second single on the suggestion of her manager, after he had heard George Harrison’s treatment of Bob Dylan’s affecting ode to love. A simple Tex-Mex tale of rustic domestic charms, Livvy’s enchanting rendering was one of many examples of middle-of-the-road artists tackling tracks from the former Beatles’ sprawling solo effort, All Things Must Pass. Moreover, with its prominent slide guitar the producers John Farrar and Bruce Welch arranged the song much closer to Harrison’s version. “I didn’t like the song then,” Olivia recalled in 2019. “Because I thought of myself as this ballad kind of person. Now I love it, and it turns out that it’s my husband John’s favourite song.”
If Not For You was subsequently issued as the title track of Newton-John’s debut album and enjoyed considerable international success as a single, including No. 25 on the American Hot 100, as well as three weeks at the top of Billboard’s Easy Listening chart. It reached the top 10 in Australia, giving her an early taste for success before her next single, Banks Of The Ohio, topped the charts Down Under. In Britain, the 45 reached No. 7 on April 18, 1971: T. Rex’s Hot Love had steamed its way to the top, but this particular week was notable for another reason — the only time all four former Beatles were in the Top 30 with solo hits at the same time — Paul McCartney with Another Day, John Lennon with Power To The People, George Harrison with My Sweet Lord, and Ringo Starr with It Don’t Come Easy.
Changes (1972)
By 1972, ONJ’s repertoire was known for weaving in a selection of covers along with original tracks. In addition to covers of songs by George Harrison, Paul Simon, and Jacques Brel — as well as the latest conjured up by her long-time collaborator John Farrar (My Old Man’s Got A Gun) — her second, mononymously-titled album was different in that it marked the first and ultimately rare occasion when Olivia contributed a tune (to) herself: the singer is credited with writing Changes all on her own.
Though not selected as a single, it’s a thing of tender beauty. The track’s subtle instrumentation lets Newton-John’s airy, nimble voice shine on a melancholy ballad that addresses the regrets of a couple facing the strain of a break-up and the effect on their child as they try to change their worlds. In other words, they’re quite aware of what they’re going through but it doesn’t make it any easier — or any less spooky how the subject matter closely mirrors some of that in David Bowie’s own (Ch-Ch) Changes released earlier the same year. Strange fascination, indeed*.
Take Me Home, Country Roads (1973)
My word du jour was almost going to be Amoureuse, a French ballad translated into English that Kiki Dee made famous almost simultaneously with ONJ’s, whose version remained a deep cut on her third album, 1973’s Let Me Be There, which broke Livvy into the US market and was a precursor to more of the country-pop direction of her music throughout most of the ’70s, a failsafe portal to blissful brown corduroy sunshine, the push-button AM radio soundtrack to Sunday drives and family picnics.
For purely sentimental reasons I’m sticking with the LP’s lead single, which was undoubtedly the first song by Olivia Newton-John I remember hearing, at the ripe old age of three-and-a-half and with a newly-born sister just weeks old. Cue instant atmosphere and mysterious Americana imagery of a far-away land.
With its deceptive choral effect opening, this lovely Livvy song starts off a bit like a gospel number you imagine Aretha Franklin singing in church, only to speed up with ONJ’s voice double-tracked all warm and centred over bass and acoustic guitar. A soft pedal steel slips in later with soft percussion and a hint of organ, giving it a suitably country vibe. It’s a strong sing-a-long number, well sung and expertly produced. Yearning for a simpler life way out west, that’s what.
This love song to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia was a UK Top 20 hit in February 1973 and put its writer John Denver on the chart map in Britain for the first time. In a funny way, it inadvertently set the scene for The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine becoming a posthumous hit for Laurel & Hardy a couple of years later, when country music was becoming the biggest thing since sliced slingbacks… or should that be brokebacks?
Summer Nights / You’re The One That I Want (1978)
In 1974, Olivia represented her country of birth at the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton, with Long Live Love, a wedge of oompah loompa cheese that’s so hard to like that even the never normally negative ONJ didn’t rate it, and she came in fourth as ABBA triumphed with Waterloo. The LP of the same name was in and out of the Top 40 in a couple of weeks too, though it is notable for featuring the Grammy award-winning I Honestly Love You, our ethereal gal’s first US No. 1 and something of a signature song until a certain movie made her the biggest thing since sliced bread — of any colour.
But we don’t want to give you that, so if you fast forward though half a dozen more long-players you’l find yourself in 1978, where the year kicked off with Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits, a well-rounded introduction to her early work for those who only want the roller-rink hits. The compilation gave the singer her first Top 10 album in Blighty. But bigger was to come. Much, much bigger.
There can’t be many people in the world that haven’t seen Grease at least once. And there can’t be many that haven’t sung along to You’re The One That I Want and Summer Nights either. They’re the film’s most iconic songs, and both of them duets showcasing the movie’s male and female leads, John Travolta as Danny Zuko and Olivia Newton-John as Sandy Olsson. Allow me a little artistic licence here, but as the 45s are only half sung by Livvy I think it’s only right you get two for the prize of one. Tell me about it, Stud.
Grease was quite literally the words on everyone’s lips in 1978: a cultural juggernaut so monolithic it would normally send me running, but the John-John songs are such giddily enjoyable earworms that all it takes is one listen and the hooks will be stuck in your head for days, if not weeks.
While the film hasn’t aged terribly well but it’s lived on for decades as a cornball karaoke favourite, as has the LP. Released in April 1978, Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture was a global sensation, dominating album charts everywhere for much of the year, including an astonishing 13 — thirteen! — week run at No. 1 in Britain and becoming the second best-selling album of the year behind the OST to Saturday Night Fever, the movie that catapulted Travolta into the stratosphere.
To date, the album’s sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, while You’re The One That I Want is on around 15 million. Indeed, Newton-John took great delight in texting Travolta a few years back to tell him the track had become “the best-selling duet in pop music history.” In pure sales terms, the song remains one of Britain’s five best-selling singles with units shifted in excess of of two million, while Summer Nights — the one at the start of the story where Danny and Sandy discuss their special summer fling to a chorus of fascinated friends — spent seven weeks at No. 1 in Blighty and is at 28 on the all-time list, with over 1.65 million sales. And we’re not done yet.
Hopelessly Devoted To You (1978)
Staying at Rydell High for a bit, the first time we heard Hopelessly Devoted To You, Sandy was singing of her feelings for Danny and how she’s hopelessly waiting for him to notice her. Livvy elevates the role which, frankly, is a little thin: the sweet, high-ponytailed, goody-goody who doesn’t even have her ears pierced. The character’s journey as written is less than empowering: to keep her man she’s going to have to change, though we shouldn’t forget the story is set in the less than progressive 1950s.
John Farrah commented that the song took longer to write than anything else he’s ever written, saying he used “every thesaurus and every rhyming dictionary I had, just trying to really make it work properly.” The effort wasn’t wasted, and the yearning, country-tinged ballad gave ONJ one of her most enduringly popular hits. It’s big, it’s dramatic, it’s dreamy, and it’s a powerhouse performance only someone with vocal chops like Olivia can handle. The track also has some country-pop sound influence, making her voice the perfect choice to tell the tale of Sandy’s devotion to Danny.
Spun off from the soundtrack album in August 1978, the single peaked at No. 2 in Britain and Australia, No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and sticking with the States, even managed to pick up an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, ultimately losing out to Donna Summer’s Last Dance from Thank God It’s Friday. Olivia Newton-John had become, quite literally, a household name.
A Little More Love (1978)
By 1978, Olivia Newton-John was firmly established as one of the decade’s most popular pop princesses. She consolidated her reign with the release of her tenth studio album, Totally Hot, which seized the momentum just in time for Christmas.
Compilations aside, it was the first ONJ LP to go platinum in the US, and reaching No. 7, her first solo Top 10 album since 1975’s Have You Never Been Mellow. Although the album de-emphasised what was then often termed country & western, it still reached No. 4 on the Billboard Country Albums chart.
Covered head to toe on the album cover in black leather, Livvy’s transformation in Grease from goody-goody “Sandy 1” to spandex-clad vixen “Sandy 2” emboldened her to do the same with her music. A Little More Love, the album’s lead single, demonstrated a more aggressive and uptempo sound, with steamy instrumental bits and charming vocals the perfect mix of sweet and sour. In the lyric, Olivia knows she has no self control over her man, and gives a “little more love” to him because she knows it gets her nowhere to tell him No. But she’s not powerless – she wants more love from her suitor.
Of all the songs on Totally Hot, A Little More Love may just be the most sweltering, and the public largely agreed, with the 45 climbing to No. 4 in the UK, No. 3 in the US, No. 2 in Canada, and was even a surprise chart-topper in Israel. For the record, if I had to pick my top three Livvy solo songs I’d probably place this at three, Hopelessly at two, and the neon confection in pole position? There goes a supernova — it’s the legend that is…
Xanadu (1980)
In Xanadu did Newton-John project, because his is the one where ELO and ONJ took us all over the world to a mythical utopia. Proving that shooting stars never stop (even when they reach the top), the gallons of goodwill Grease generated deflated quickly when Olivia Newton-John starred in her second Hollywood musical, 1980’s execrable Xanadu. This rollerball romp about Greek goddesses released from a Venice Beach mural was so cringeworthy even the sight of an elderly roller-skating Gene Kelly in his final role couldn’t save it from its own preposterousness.
The film was an expensive flop, and it hardly helped that it came out in the midst of the “disco sucks” backlash, but — plot twist alert — its star power soundtrack was slightly glorious and generated some of the biggest hits of Livvy’s career. Some go for the mystical Magic, a US No. 1, or Suddenly, a Bee Geesian love theme with Cliff. But it’s the spooky, dramatic title track that resonates with me, especially as the 45 was the third and final UK chart-topper to feature Olivia to date.
Its writer and producer Jeff Lynne regards Xanadu as the best song he ever did, and it’s hard to disagree: it’s essentially a signature slice of classic Electric Light Orchestra (save for its driving rhythm track pinched from the Four Tops’ I Can’t Help Myself**) overlaid with an irresistible set of triple-tracked vocals by ONJ that descend like the heavenly muse she portrays in the film; indicative of her skill as an interpreter and ability to elevate glitzy manicured pop.
Indeed, all the OTT ELO hallmarks are there: a throwback wall-of-sound fusing Beatlesque fantasia, classical arrangements, and glam rock grandiosity, building up to that soaring, slightly hysterical crescendo — all together now, Xana-dooh-ooh-ooooooooooooooo!
Physical (1981)
“I took you to an intimate restaurant, then to a suggestive movie/ There’s nothing left to talk about unless it’s horizontally.”
She’s. So. Physical! Cold shower for miss Newton-John, pur-lease. Oh, and get this: the biggest hit of the eighties didn’t come from Michael Jackson, Madonna or Prince. It will forever belong to Olivia, in the US at least — and she didn’t have to join the chorus to about Africans at Christmas either (the UK’s decade-topper was Band Aid’s charity ensemble-thon).
How did a song originally rejected by Tina Turner get to spend 10 weeks at No. 1 on the American Hot 100, the meat in the sandwich between the No. 1 reigns of two Hall & Oates classics: Private Eyes in November ’81 and I Can’t Go For That in January ’82? As you might imagine, the stars had to align for this to happen, and not just because in Roger Davies, the legend of Nutbush and Livvy shared the same manager. The final scene in Grease made ONJ a bit of a sex symbol, so exploiting that to the nth degree, along came the rumpy-pumpy Physical and its suggestive lyrics, which may seem tame by today’s standards but got the song banned in some markets at the time.
The public didn’t care. From a structural standpoint, it’s a New Wave concoction with a dance groove that’s slinky and seductive. Livvy’s slightly mundane vocal might seem odd (and lame) now. But back then it felt like tuning into her transformation from a mousy and blousy young woman to a sexy pop diva.
The not-so-innocent Australian girl-next-door proved, once and for all, that sex sells… mountains of records. Though for the promotional video, ONJ — a natural for the new medium’s lofty photogenic standards — got cold feet and suggested the now iconic clip extol the benefits of a different kind of workout… in the gym. Though even that lycra and leggings legacy wasn’t without controversy, and the end shots showing musclebound hunks pairing off with each other was often faded early. Nonetheless, the controversy cemented Newton-John’s status as an LGBT icon.
“When the song came out — I recorded it, thought it was a great song and then had a panic attack, and called my manager and said, ‘You can’t put this out! It’s too over the top; it’s too risqué.’ He said, ‘It’s too late, it’s gone to radio.’ So then I said, ‘Well, you know what I think? We need to make it more about exercise and take away from the naughtiness.’ But, of course, that made it even naughtier.”
Despite its huge success, in the land of Olivia’s birth the single had a little less energy, debuting at a lowly 57 the same October 1981 week that Adam Ant was sitting pretty in pole position with his Prince Charming. Physical eventually rose to No. 7 six weeks later, by which time the top spot was occupied by Queen & David Bowie’s comply duelling Under Pressure.
Twist Of Fate (1983)
Five years on from Sandy and Danny, Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta tried to recapture the magic of Grease in Two Of A Kind. They didn’t exactly succeed, and Travolta’s butched-up simian charisma was out of favour for much of the decade. While the film was panned, its soundtrack was a little more electrifying – although the lead single, the Laura Branigan-worthy Twist Of Fate, would end up being Newton-John’s last top 10 single in many countries, including the US, where the 45 charted at the same time Madonna’s first hit Holiday, was climbing, signalling a passing of the baton from pop’s past to pop’s future.
I admit, I struggle a little with this one — for me it’s less Xanadu and a bit more Xanadon’t. Twist of Fate is an edgy pop bop meets synth-rock stomper with occasionally poignant lyrics, courtesy Peter Beckett and Steve Kipnera, about desperately trying to get back together with a separated lover. Livvy’s shouty shapeshifted vocals were clearly inspired by Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart, but David Foster’s production is so of its time you can hear the hairspray. There’s a decent song under the bombast somewhere, but the tinny, wiggly keyboards give it the sonics of a Giorgio Moroder reject that’s playing in the next room. All in all, a slice of cod melodrama so completely unaware of its camp value — which is exactly why the gays love the song and I felt compelled to end the listicle with it.
In Britain, Twist Of Fate lived up to its title and stalled at a lowly 57. In a territory so dominated by pop culture and its prevailing tide of in, out, cool, uncool, fashionable, unfashionable, ONJ was perceived as a bit old hat, and terminally dwindling record sales were the result. But Olivia was far from the only casualty: in a slightly delayed decade-cleansing purge, a roll-call of family friendly acts who’d dominated mainstream pop in the 1970s started to fall out of favour like dominos, one by one: first the Carpenters, then the Bee Gees, with Boney M., Fleetwood Mac and even ABBA following suit.
Still, in recent years Twist Of Fate gained new fans thanks to an appearance during Season 2 of Netflix’s Stranger Things. It’s not quite Running Up That Hill proportions but it’s managed to prevail on. As did Olivia, remarkably, for thirty years after her first cancer diagnosis, which characterises Olivia Newton-John’s infectious optimism and approach to life.
I’ll always think of her spinning on my parents’ turntable atop that glass cabinet, her voice like an afternoon daydream — but also, floating off into the sunset in a T-Bird convertible. She took us along with her or at least, showed us it was possible to fly; she turns back to wave, after all. Olivia Newton-John embodied both glamour and goodness, the nice girl next door who got what she wanted, her angelic treble as sweet as her message. Oh yes indeed.
God rest her beautiful soul.
Dame Olivia Newton John AC DBE, 26 September 1948 – 8 August 2022
Steve Pafford
*There are a trio of tunes that were covered by both David Bowie and Olivia Newton-John: Lesley Duncan’s Love Song, the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows, and Rogers & Hammerstein’s You’ll Never Walk Alone, the latter only attempted on stage by the then Davy Jones and the Lower Third in the mid 1960s.
**However, containing the separation degrees thing, the driving rhythm of Bowie’s nineties single Strangers When We Meet lifts the same pulsating bass rhythm that Xanadu had copped from the Four Tops’ I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch). Spookily, that Motown classic was co-written by Lamont Dozier, who died on the same day as Olivia.
