I had avoided posting obituaries for a while, thankfully but news just came in that Olivia Newton-John has succumbed in her long battle with breast cancer.
I am not a fan of Grease or a lot of her 70’s work – I did love her in the band/film Toomorrow which sadly never was released at the time – but Olivia Newton-John’s 80’s work, especially with E.L.O. such as ‘Xanadu’ from the frankly bizarre film of the same name and the much-sampled ‘Magic’ is *chefs kiss*.
Even the much-mocked ‘Physical’ with it’s so-80’s-it-hurts aerobics video which was parodied from here to Mount Olympus actually turned out to be a major inspiration for the likes of Dua Lipa and Goldfrapp, who have both released tracks that are suspiciously close to it – also it seems a lot of the French Touch artists (Fred Falke in particularly) have been inspired by her 80’s disco/pop work.
(N0t sure the ‘oh they’re gay’ end gag totally works in these times, but given the rampant homophobia of the time, I’ll take it!).
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