Olivia 1948 to 2022 - Country Music People

The English-born and Australian-raised singer and actress Olivia Newton-John lost her fight against stage IV cancer in her California home on August 8, seven weeks shy of her 74th birthday.

First diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, it returned in 2013, and in 2017 it was revealed that it again recurred but this time had spread to her bones and lower back.

Although best-known for playing Sandy in the film Grease and topping the charts for multiple weeks with songs from the soundtrack, there was a period between 1973 and 1979 in which the Cambridge-born singer charted fifteen songs on the Hot Country charts, and she was named CMA Female Vocalist of the year in 1974.

The daughter of a headmaster (her grandfather, Max Born, was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist], Olivia's family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia in 1954 when Olivia was six years old.

A regular on Australian TV as a teenager, success in a talent show won her a trip to London where early attempts a getting a foot in the door of the entertainment industry included a short-lived duo with fellow Aussie vocalist Pat Carroll, a couple of singles, and being part of the manufactured bubblegum group Toomorrow. With only one minor hit behind them the group disbanded but Olivia Newton-John became an opening act on Cliff Richard’s touring show and a regular on his TV series It’s Cliff!

Breaking into the UK pop charts with If Not For You in 1971, her pretty voice and folky pop sound helped take the single to #7 in the UK and to #25 in the US, where it also topped the Adult Contemporary (AC) chart.

The follow-up, Banks Of The Ohio, a 19th Century murder ballad that had been cut by Charley Pride in 1968, and Johnny Cash four years earlier, struggled to chart Stateside but went to #6 in the UK. She also covered John Denver’s Take Me Home Country Roads, taking it to #15 on the UK pop chart.

Olivia Newton-John's country breakthrough in America came via the title track to her 1973 album Let Me Be There. The single went gold early in 1974 and peaked at #7 on the country chart. Many of Nashville's music community were less than pleased, especially when Let Me Be There went on to win a Grammy for Country Female Vocal.

She followed Let Me Be There with another from the same writer, John Rostill, If You Love Me (Let Me Know) which provided Olivia with her most successful foray onto the country chart. Peaking at #2, it also went #5 Pop, and was followed by her Record Of The Year/Female Vocal Grammy-winning I Honestly Love You. That topped the Pop charts as well as going #6 Country.

The success of her first three Country charters led to Newton-John being named the CMA Female vocalist in 1974. This further enraged Nashville's established performers, especially because in the same year Dolly Parton had topped the charts with both Jolene and I Will Always Love You, and the previous year the honour had gone to Loretta Lynn.

The purists revolted, many performers rescinded their CMA membership, and as a result founded the Association of Country Entertainers with the aim to preserve country music as a separate and distinct form of entertainment. It never really got off the ground but the words of Billy Walker at the time resonate even more strongly today. He suggested that, ...efforts to take country music to a wider audience would dilute it to a point where it no longer exists as an art form.

One of Olivia's supporters however, was Dolly's sister Stella Parton who recorded a song called Ode To Olivia.

That same year, 1974, Olivia Newton-John represented the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest with Long Live Love. That was the one in which Abba triumphed with Waterloo. But Olivia continued to chalk up country hits including the top tens Have You Ever Been Mellow (#3), Please Mr. Please (#5), Let It Shine (#5), and the Gibb Brothers - penned Come On Over (#5) which provided her last visit to the Country Top Ten.

She continued to chart until 1979 [the year she was honoured with an OBE) with songs including her UK pop hit Sam, and the global smash from Grease, Hopelessly Devoted To You. Olivia's part in the 1978 film, Grease, and her duets with co-star John Travolta, propelled her to international stardom, and by the end of the decade she had already begun to move in a more pop/ soft rock/ disco direction, one that would ensure she was one of the biggest stars of the 1980s.

She reinvented herself as a more raunchy artist with her aerobics themed smash Physical in an effort to move away from the innocent image of her earlier career. She also starred in the movies Xanadu and Two Of A Kind.

In 1998, Olivia returned to Nashville to record Back With A Heart. A re-recording of I Honestly Love You was ignored by country radio but nevertheless returned her to the Country Albums chart reaching #9.

In 2016 Olivia Newton-John collaborated with Beth Nielsen Chapman and Amy Sky for the album Liv On. The goal of the album was to create songs with a message of compassion and hope for anyone facing a time of challenge in their life. It topped the UK Country albums chart.

Olivia Newton-John became an advocate for Breast Cancer Research, having battled the disease three times. She also became an activist for environmental and animal rights causes, even as far back as 1978 she cancelled a tour of Japan in protest at the killing of dolphins in tuna fishing nets.

As the pain of her cancer increased she became an advocate of for the use of medical cannabis. In the 2020 New Year Honours she was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire [DBE).

Olivia Newton-John had never considered herself a country singer and only really became a country star by accident. She was one of the most successful female vocalists of the 1970s, with ten AC #15, five Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers, two platinum and four 2x platinum albums to her credit.

Her success on the country chart is typical of the CMAs, and the country music industry in Nashville, to chase the crossover and ride on the back of success in other genres in the hope of expanding country's popularity.

However, listening to her country hits now, it’s hard to deny that something like Please Mr. Please isn't a very decent country song indeed.

For that matter, Hopelessly Devoted To You always was, and continues to be, a country song, albeit one dressed up in petticoats and sung by a 28 year old playing the part of a high school girl.