Making A Good Thing Better review

A new album by pretty Olivia Newton-John is hardly an event. Her sweet, wispy voice has been aggressively merchandised in an all-too-prolific series of albums whose vision and variety has been as narrow as an accountant’s eye for profit.

Then, suddenly, on her new Making A Good Thing Better (MCA) album there comes a rivetingly adventurous performance of “Don’t Cry For Me. Argentina” from the Webber-Rice opera Evita. It was recorded separately from the rest of the collection, in Vancouver, arranged and conducted by Peter Myers.

The rest of the album is hardly a match for this surprise - neither remarkably good nor bad, just all too familiar and spread too thin. Yet “Argentina” suggests dramatic abilities which Newton-John ought to direct toward performances in film before her managers and producers wear out her welcome.