Physical

by

Olivia Newton-John

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In October 1981, Olivia Newton-John released "Physical"

BEFORE:

The poster-girl of sweet wholesome pop music, Olivia began changing her image in Grease and the "Totally Hot" album which followed suit. She also had appeared in the movie Xanadu, which flopped but had a hit soundtrack. This was to be her first studio album in three years.

AFTER:

The title track was a #1 hit for ten weeks (making it the #1 song of the 1980's), the album went double platinum and peaked at #6. The album had another top five hit with "Make A Move On Me". Olivia was on top of the world at the moment. Hosting SNL, preparing to open Koala Blue, and embarking on a wildly successful 1982 tour. This was the peak of Olivia's popularity.

While Physical, the track, has been overplayed to the extent that the song is a caricature instead of an actual record, the album as a whole retains as the strongest album of Livvy's career.

1. Landslide (5/5) is the perfect leadoff single. The song is fast, dancy and sets the pace for the record.

2. Stranger's Touch (5/5) is even better (a shame it wound up on a b-side). The sexiest moment off the album.

3. Make A Move On Me (5/5) is a classic and is catchy as hell. The video was terrible but the song makes up for it.

4. Falling (5/5) is a beautiful acoustic haunting ballad about falling in love.

5. Love Make Me Strong (3.5/5) is a good song but probably the worst track.

6. Physical (5/5), what needs to be said about it? everyone knows this song.

7. Silvery Rain (5/5). Olivia was caring about the environment back when most of the "environmentalist" rock stars weren't even signed yet. The song rocks and is one of the best of the album. Starts out like a mellow 70's ONJ rock song and then becomes a rocker during the chorus. Even though Cliff Richard did the song a decade before Livvy, you can tell she deeply cares about the lyrics.

8. Carried Away (4.5/5). A pretty Gibb ballad that was originally written but then rejected for Barbra Streisand's "Guilty" album, and it probably wouldn't have fit there because it's structured a little too much like "Woman In Love". A soothing upbeat early 80's ballad you could listen to in the tub.

9. Recovery (4/5) kinda reminds me of "(Want You) Back In My Life" by The Carpenters. Kind of a tropical sounding sound with very audible John Farrar background vocals.

10. The Promise (4.5/5). Another environmentalist ballad. Very beautiful and Olivia sings about her love for dolphins (you can hear dolphins in the background). A beautiful song.

I would love Universal to remaster this (I know there's an import) and add some bonus tracks from the period... I heard Olivia recorded a demo of "I Paralyse" around this album, which ended up being recorded by Cher the next year (which was produced by Farrar too)

What is it, exactly, about music you heard when you were young? Whether you loved it, loved it only secretly, or hated it, you are doomed to revisit it. So with me and Olivia Newton-John's "Physical," an album both like and unlike anything else in her output to that point. My sister had this album when I was just a kid, and I don't remember thinking too highly of it as she played it. No matter--to this day, this album can still play out in my head whenever I want, and sometimes when I don't.

In any case, "Physical" was something of a marketing ploy for Newton-John, who to that point had largely confined herself and her wispy, waifish, debatably overpretty voice, to monster hits characterized by pseudo-country flavorings and often painfully affected innocence ("Have You Never Been Mellow," "I Honestly Love You," etc.) For this album, her fans were asked to swallow a newer and marginally more sexual image. It would have worked, but the title tune was badly overplayed, which placed Newton-John in direct competition with innumerable other female singers who could emote sexuality with a little more sincerity. Perhaps abetted by a (inadvertently?) campy video, and by endless repetition in aerobics classes nationwide, "Physical" is perhaps now more commonly associated with the early 80s fitness fad, and stands as something of a novelty tune.

That's too bad, since some other tracks on this album are more worthwhile. "Stranger's Touch" beats out "Physical" as the one track in Newton-John's entire output where she really _does_ sound sexy, while "Make a Move on Me" comes close in the verses, and is only undone by the sing-songy chorus (still, a nice hook) and a cheesy introductory synth riff. "Silvery Rain" is high on studio-effect-mediated atmosphere, but don't pay too much attention to the lyrics, which introduce Newton-John's ongoing strain of simplistic environmentalism (I lean strongly left on environmental issues, personally, but I find most celebrity forays into the topic to be largely naive and silly). "Recovery" and the other tracks are more typical of her earlier output, but the album as a whole sounds different, perhaps due to a persistent studio-distorted or -reverbed acoustic guitar present on most of the tracks.

"Physical" stands as Newton-John's most interesting _sound_, and includes some of her best vocals. That this places her squarely in the middle of the heap of female pop vocalists should prevent no one from sampling its guilty pleasures.