When I read, in the fall of 1981 that she had, with her release of the albums Totally Hot and Physical, purposefully set out to change her good-girl image, I thought I would give her a try by purchasing my first ONJ albums. Although I found Newton-John’s singing pleasant-as I said, completely non-objectionable-I also did not find it magnetic or compelling. With her release of “Let Me Be There” in 1974, she won the Grammy and the Country Music Association award for Female Vocalist of the Year-which ruffled some feathers in Nashville, where favorites such as Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Tanya Tucker were all overlooked.Īll of this ONJ activity was only in my peripheral vision, though. Her career was definitely not going straight up, though, and her musical style fluctuated for a while between pop and country. She released her first album in 1971, and followed that up by participating in the Eurovision contest, finishing just behind ABBA. Upon winning a singing contest-the prize of which was a trip to Britain-she moved back to the U.K. She had been performing since childhood, and while growing up had taken the initiative to form girl groups and folk-rock duos. Her family moved to Australia in the mid-1950’s for her father’s work, who was a professor. Newton-John is British, having been born in 1948 in Cambridge. Please, Something Better to Do, Let It Shine, Don’t Stop Believin’, Sam, Hopelessly Devoted To You-and then, with the success of the movie Grease featuring herself and John Travolta, You’re The One I Want and Summer Nights. “I Honestly Love You” had been her first number one hit in the U.S., which was followed by an impressive number of consecutive chart-topping songs: Have You Never Been Mellow, Please Mr. Her innocent, vibratoless soprano struck me as being a bit phlegmatic, but not objectionable. I had liked-not loved, but liked-Olivia Newton-John since she broke onto the scene in 1974. There IS an Olivia Newton-John tie-in here… Now, in my old age, I think I’m doing great to stay on the treadmill for 30 minutes at a pace that just barely qualifies as jogging. It took a long time for my jogging gene to fade away. But by the early 1980’s, when Tiraje and I (and little Jason) had moved to Dayton, it was more like 5-10 miles a day, and of course every day. At the outset, it was just a couple of miles a day. I started by running around the track at the University of Cincinnati, where I was a student. I was 25 years old when I became interested in-which, as you know, for me means obsessed with-jogging.
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