Olivia Newton-John passed away last week, and by all accounts was an absolutely wonderful person, and made some huge songs that will live forever. But like a lot of people of my generation, I grew up only really knowing her for Grease and "Physical" (which was the #1 song on the day I was born!), and it had surprised me to learn that she was primarily a country singer before that era. So I wanted to dig into her catalog and get a better sense of her music. 

1. Love Song

2. Changes

3. Why Don't You Write Me

4. Rosewater

5. Loving You Ain't Easy

6. The River's Too Wide

7. Life Stream

8. I Never Did Sing You A Love Song

9. Lovers

10. It'll Be Me

11. Love You Hold The Key

12. Don't Ask A Friend

13. Sad Songs

14. Look At Me I'm Sandra Dee (reprise)

15. We Go Together (with John Travolta)

16. Borrowed Time

17. Talk To Me

18. Suspended In Time

19. The Promise (The Dolphin Song)

20. Stranger's Touch

21. Carried Away

22. Shaking You

23. Queen Of The Publication

Track 1 from If Not For You (1971)

Tracks 2 and 3 from Olivia (1972)

Track 4 from Music Makes My Day (1973)

Track 1 from Let Me Be There (1973)

Tracks 5 and 6 from Long Live Love (1974)

Track 2 from If You Love Me, Let Me Know (1974)

Tracks 7 and 8 from Have You Never Been Mellow (1975)

Track 9 from Clearly Love (1975)

Track 10 from Come On Over (1976)

Track 11 from Don't Stop Believin' (1976)

Tracks 12 and 13 from Making A Good Thing Better (1977)

Tracks 14 and 15 from Grease: The Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture (1978)

Tracks 16 and 17 from Totally Hot (1978)

Track 18 from Xanadu (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1980)

Tracks 19, 20 and 21 from Physical (1981)

Track 22 from Two Of A Kind: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1983)

Track 23 from Soul Kiss (1985)

Olivia Newton-John was born in England, and moved to Australia as a child. And somehow from that background, she became one of the biggest non-American singers in country music in the 1970s. She scored seven top 10 country hits before the success of Grease moved her music into a more pop crossover direction. And honestly, most of her country records just sound like soft rock to me anyway, other than maybe "The River's Too Wide" and a couple other songs, she was just making pop music with occasional pedal steel. 

Olivia Newton-John's early albums have kind of a muddled, confusing release history. Her debut If Not For You came out in America, but isn't on streaming services today. Her 2nd album, Olivia, wasn't released in America at the time, but is streaming now. Her 3rd album was called Music Makes My Day in the UK, but in America it was called Let Me Be There, re-used the Olivia cover photo and has a completely different running order combining songs from all three albums (even more confusingly, in Australia the album had the title of the UK version and the running order of the U.S.) version. Then, If You Love Me, Let Me Know was a U.S.-only release cobbled together with songs from earlier albums. I guess that weird approach worked out, though, because Let Me Be There was her first Gold album and got her first Grammy, and If You Love Me, Let Me Know spawned her first #1 single. 

 

Olivia Newton-John's career was pretty up-and-down for a while, she'd make a big hit and then bump around the lower reaches of the charts until finding the next big one. In fact, a year before Grease, she sued to try to get out of her MCA contract, accusing the label of underpromoting her, which resulted in them retaliating and promoting Making A Good Thing Even Better even less. MCA didn't release the Grease soundtrack, but they got several platinum or multi-platinum albums out of her in the years following its success. 5 years after Grease, Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta reunited for Two Of A Kind, a "romantic fantasy crime comedy" that, as you can imagine, was not a huge box office success. But the soundtrack album, which they both sang on, went platinum. And though it's not on streaming services today, Newton-John's songs from the movie are on the recent 40th anniversary reissue of Physical. 

Over the first 15 years of her career, Olivia Newton-John only wrote or co-wrote 7 songs on her albums, and none of them were released as singles, so they're all included here: "Changes," "Rosewater," "Love You Hold The Key," "Don't Ask A Friend," "Talk To Me," "Borrowed Time," and "The Promise (The Dolphin Song)." The 1977 compilation Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits, which went double platinum, did include "Changes" to showcase her writing, though. "Talk To Me" has this really cool ominous intro, and then after 20 seconds it kind of changes tone and becomes a sweet, friendly song. 

Newton-John's albums were full of covers, mixed with originals written by Nashville pros or her longtime producer, John Farrar, a fellow Australian. I think the weakest parts of her albums are when she attempts to sing songs made famous by Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson and really doesn't sound like a natural country singer, but she really has a gorgeous voice with the right material. I included her cover of "Why Don't You Write Me" since I also recently put it on my Simon & Garfunkel deep cuts playlist. "Carried Away" was written by Barry Gibb, who also penned Newton-John's hits "I Can't Help It" and "Come On Over." 

Farrar wrote the biggest song of her country era, "Have You Never Been Mellow," and he also wrote two of the new songs for Grease that hadn't been in the original stage musical -- both of them,"You're The One That I Want" and "Hopelessly Devoted To You," were massive hits. And he wrote my favorite song on this playlist, the twangy yet funky "It'll Be Me." One of his songs for Xanadu, "Suspended In Time," was the only deep cut featured on the 2018 tribute album Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John. 

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