Making A Good Thing Better
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN: Making a Good Thing Better. Olivia Newton-John (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Slow Dancing; Ring of Fire; Coolin’ Down; If Love Is Real; Sad Songs; I Think I’ll Say Goodbye; and five others. MCA-2280 $6.98, $7.98. MCAC-2280 $7.98. MCAT-2280
Performance: One fascinating track
Recording: Excellent
Everyone’s favorite little sunshine girl, Olivia Newton-John, is back in another album that flows as smoothly as lukewarm fudge into a cooling pan. Even that old house-burner Ring of Fire gets petted and tucked in with her customary cheerful, cozy, young-nanny style.
The exception is the last track on side one. The song is called Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, from the opera Evita by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and listening to it in Newton-John’s performance is a fascinating experience. It is a vivid, highly dramatic set-piece in which Evita (Eva Peron) explains to her countrymen that she seemed to have had no choice in her driven, seeking life: “I had to let it happen, I had to let it change/Couldn’t stay all my life down at heel/Looking out of the window staying out of the sun/So I chose freedom running around trying everything new/But nothing impressed me at all, I never expected it to.” The way Olivia Newton-John sings this is startling in its intensity, depth, and fire. That one might easily substitute “Australia” for “Argentina” and thereby suggest what must be the singer’s own ambivalent feelings about leaving Down Under to become an international star only adds to the song’s fascination.
So, for one really incredible track, the Western world’s favorite ingenue has dropped her cutesie, adorable mask and shown that she’s an actress of considerable force and an even more intriguing woman than we sensed she was all along.
P.R.