Making A Good Thing Better album review
Olivia Newton-John: Making a Good Thing Better. John Farrar, producer. MCA 2280, $7.98. Tape: MCAC 2280, 8-track MCA T 2280, $7.98.
Newton-John’s seventh album is, sadly, her most insipid yet. The novelty of her baby-doll vocalizing is evidently wearing thin on the public, as her noticeably decreasing sales demonstrate Please Mr. Please was her last gold single, though she’s released seven since and her albums are now only selling in the hundreds of thousands rather than the millions. (I said she was selling less, not that there aren’t still a lot of old softies out there! )
“Making a Good Thing Better” is also her first LP to be recorded in its entirety in Los Angeles. In addition to producer John Farrar, who’s also played guitar on all of her previous work, Newton-John is surrounded largely by the same people who play on everybody else’s L.A recordings. Not that this one sounds like everybody else’s; it sounds like every other Olivia Newton-John album.
The shortcomings are in the vocal performance and in the material, not in the computer-perfect backing tracks. In a sense, what Farrar has done is pretty noteworthy. He’s chosen the most uninspired material of some of the finer, though lesser-known, songwriters around. Pete Wingfield (l8 with a Bullet a couple of years back) wrote the title tune, and Jack Tempchin and Jules Shear of the Funky Kings, progressive country-type Marshall Chapman, and Randy Edelman some of the other cuts.
The closest thing to a winner is Tempchin’s Slow Dancing, which seems to all but put Newton-John to sleep. Perhaps surprisingly, the more, notable tunes are by Farrar and by the singer herself. His Cooling Down, about a love affair on the wilt, is at least suited to Newton-John’s delivery, and her Don’t Ask a Friend, is at the very least the equivalent of just about anything else on the album. Also, she seems most interested in this piece than in most of the rest.
Like its predecessors, “Making a Good Thing Better” is professionally produced and as tastefully all set out. There’s doubtless a good deal of enjoyment in its grooves for any solid fan. Newton-John no doubt less the talents but this LP’s chief fault is its failure to live up to its title.