Newton-John is too MOR to be great
By Boris Weintraub, 1975 Washington Star
WASHINGTON - There is a category in the music business called “MOR.”!
MOR stands for middle-of-the-road, and bears approximately the same relationship to music as WASP does to population: both embody the vast middle between extremes, but are characterless, inoffensive, unexciting.
Olivia Newton-John is the current queen of MOR. In the last year or so, she has gone from being an unknown singer with a funny name to being a one-woman industry. Every record of her has become a hit; her songs are played on rock stations, top 40 stations, country stations and so-called “easy-listening” stations. Hit follows hit follows hit.
The trouble is that each hit sounds just about like the hit that preceded it and the one that is about to follow it. Each is expertly crafted as a two-and-a-half minute plece of manufactured plastic; each sounds as though it has interchangeable parts strings, flute, deep bass-voice backup, high falsetto-volce backup - which can be pulled out of one hit and plugged into another, without anyone knowing the difference.
Let Me Be There because I Honestly Love You but Have You Never Been Mellow so If You Love Me, Let Me Know, Please Mister Please? Sort of like that.
Newton-John was greeted this week in her first appearance here by the sort of audience that any performer would want if such unalloyed fanaticism weren’t so embarrassing. At one point in mid-concert, after she had sung one of her hits, the spectators rose and gave her an ovation that lasted for a couple of minutes. To her credit, she blushed and said, “I don’t believe you did that.”
She is, it cannot be denied, one of the more appealing performers to come along in recent years. She is an absolute joy to look at - a perky, bright, extremely pretty young woman simply dressed in a sweater and jeans; perfectly creased, brightly patched jeans, to be sure, but jeans, nevertheless.
And she has a friendly, unassuming stage presence. She has a nice way of poking fun at herself, she doesn’t take herself too seriously as to some of her more ardent fans and she is not above kidding or teasing, though she could use a new joke writer.
But the big surprise is that she has an excellent, expressive voice when it is challenged by decent material. This is a surprise because all of those hits sound so alike that one tends to stop paying attention to her volce after a while; how much attention can you pay after the 124th listening of Have You Never Been Mellow?
The hits sounded just the way they sound on record, which, of course, is the way the audience wanted them. Any spontaneity, improvisation or imagination is uncalled-for; by now, these songs are beyond help.
But when she sang The Hollies’ The Air That I Breaathe or a fine song that she wrote herself about the heartbreak that follows the breakup of a marriage, or Love Is The Key To It All, she sounded like a mature, intelligent woman, something that the hits would never suggest.
The answer to the Olivia Newton-John problem, then, is obvious. She has reached the stage where she doesn’t have to worry about making hits; they’ll come. What she ought to do now is start recording good songs, songs that challenge her so that she can respond regularly to the challenge. Only then will she move cut of the realm of MOR and become a pop singer worth taking seriously.