Newton-John found greater success - including her fourth Hot 100 No. 3-peaking “A Little More Love,” and her 1980 duet with fellow solid-gold ’70s hitmaker Andy Gibb “I Can’t Help It” had missed the top 10 entirely, stalling at No. Totally Hot tread water commercially, reaching the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart but spawning just a single Hot 100 top 10 hit in the No. This was uncharted territory for Australia’s sweetheart.īut a reinvention was perhaps necessary for the ’70s superstar at the onset of a new decade. The “Physical” video, on the other hand, ends with Newton-John’s scantily clad iron-pumpers mostly coupling off together and leaving the gym hand in hand, perhaps headed to a different kind of workout. But that was still throwback family entertainment at heart, closing with her and John Travolta’s Danny literally driving off into the sky together. Her Sandy character’s famous “tell me about it, stud” pivot to cigarettes and black leather at the end of 1978’s cartoonishly successful Grease - a visual transformation continued on the cover to her Totally Hot album later that year - had presented her in a more adult light. She had spent the ’70s as the wholesome good girl at the heart of AM radio, soft and gentle and certainly inoffensive. Of course, none of this is what anyone was expecting from Olivia Newton-John in 1981. In other words, it was perfect - particularly from the vantage of early MTV, where the golden rule was quickly established: Ensure that nobody can ever hear your song without also picturing the video again. It’s campy, it’s sexy, and it’s totally incomprehensible from a narrative standpoint. Set in a gym that looks more like the final level of an early arcade game - the kind of sharply geometrically defined, impossibly shiny-surfaced room that only seems to exist in ’80s music videos - Newton-John leads a group workout with a bunch of oiled-down muscle men, who inexplicably turn into overweight klutzes (and then back again) over the course of the video. So did the rest of its parent LP of the same name, actually: Physical was released as a whole video album, a pioneering practice in ’81, which earned Newton-John a primetime Let’s Get Physical TV special (and, eventually, the second-ever video of the year Grammy.) But the title track’s clip was the crown jewel. “Physical” debuted on September 28, 1981, less than two months after the seismic launch of MTV, and oh boy did it have an accompanying visual ready for the occasion. You showed me how, even when I wasn’t paying attention.And the song was only half the story. Would a little more love make it right? Would it make you come back?Īs I revisit your music today, I see that your words guide me daily in the work that I do and the ways I endeavor to foster sustainable well-being for all humans. My BFF, Sarah, and I wallpapered her basement with purple paper and roller skated around, singing under disco lights. I was OBSESSED with your songs with ELO on the Xanadu soundtrack in 6th grade. My dad played them in the car on his 8-track cassette. I knew all your earlier singer-songwriter Aussie country hits like this one, and Please, Mister, Please. My reverence began way before my friends fell in love with you in Grease. You were made a Dame but you were always your own Queen. You were one of the first celebrities to talk openly about your breast cancer. Your lyrics guided me through the 70s, 80s. Oh Olivia Newton-John, I honestly love you.
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