I had a huge crush on ONJ 😍 – let me just put it out there (and I bet every guy reading this post did too !). She was/is IMHO, one of the most beautiful female singing voices of all time. And girl-next-door charm by the ship load to boot. Her silken voice used to waft over the airwaves in Delhi quite regularly, and somehow, having only ever seen her photo on an LP cover, I always pictured her singing each song with a big smile on her lips. A modern day (Doris) Day , if you know what I mean 😊. Her fantastic catalogue of songs from the early 70s – such as Please Mr Please, Let Me Be There, Jolene, Have You Ever Been Mellow and If You Love Me Let Me Know – were staples on ‘Forces Request’ and ‘A Date With You’ and, ok I confess….I knew every single lyric. Still do – I listened to these songs last night, and without hesitation was singing along to every song 😇 ( and for all those raised eyebrows out there, I also know the lyrics to Smoke On The Water, Locomotive Breath and Wish You Were Here…so there 😊).  

I’ll come back to ONJ’s 70’s catalogue in a minute, but first, let’s talk…..Magic. This is the song that cemented my crush on ONJ. It’s from the 1980 movie Xanadu, a musical retelling of an ancient Greek tale about a Muse (ONJ) and the artist she inspires. Unfortunately, the movie was a lemon – but, for me at least, ONJ shone like a supernova, especially on this song. ELO’s ethereal music, ONJ’s otherworldly voice (especially on the chorus and that haunting “for youuuuuuuu”), and, that gorgeous million-watt smile….. seriously folks, I used to go weak in the knees watching that video! Somewhere in the recesses of my mind is a memory of first watching the laser disc of the movie at Pranay’s house in SDA – gobsmacked. Can’t tell you much about the plot. But the cast….ah, those youthful crushes! 😌

ONJ’s 70s songs, overflowing with ‘good-girl’ charm, were deeply romantic and exactly what lovelorn Delhi-ites wanted to play for each other on the radio. Both ‘Forces Request’ and ‘A Date With You’ played her songs as coded messages of high-school and college romance. ONJ isn’t a songwriter herself and so some of her early hits came from covers of mainly country songs, such as Dolly Parton’s Jolene,  Bob Dylan’s If Not For You or John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. But then… there were the amazing songs written especially for her, which one can’t even imagine any other artist singing.

The granddaughter of a noble laureate (Max Born) and the daughter of a Cambridge headmaster who worked at Bletchley Park during the war, ONJ moved from England to Australia when she was only six. At 15, she won a trip to England in a TV talent show, made the reverse trip and stayed on, building her musical career. By 1974 she was established enough to represent UK in the Eurovision song contest, coming in in fourth place. Frankly, it would have been impossible for ONJ to win that year as a little known Swedish group took the stage and destroyed all the competition. Yup, that was the year Abba won Eurovision with Waterloo! However, Eurovision did raise ONJ’s profile, and as she discovered her country groove & relocated to the US, her career really took off with a number of #1s, Grammys and huge sales numbers following in her wake. Over her career, Dame Olivia Newton John has won 4 Grammys, an Emmy , 11 AMA awards and has sold over 100 Million records, putting her on the list of the 100 best selling artists of all time.

And then came Grease, which took ONJ from star to supernova. One evening in ’77, ONJ was at a dinner party Helen Reddy’s home in LA, when she met Grease producer Allan Carr. Carr had been looking for someone special to play Sandy to John Travolta’s Danny – and took one look at ONJ that evening, and offered her the role on the spot! Initially, 28-year old ONJ turned the part down, worried that she couldn’t play a high-school girl and would be too old for 23-year old Travolta. She insisted on a screen test to see if their chemistry would work – their screen test was so good, they used that shot in the actual movie! Grease was a humungous hit and with it ONJ, the person, entered my consciousness!

Back in Class 8 at Springdales, I was part of a group of kids that went on an exchange program to a school in Urbana, Ohio. I lived there for a while on a 1000-acre farm with my future forever friends, the Stickley family. Grease, the movie, had just been released and that summer you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing “You’re The One That I Want”, “Greased Lightning” or “Hopelessly Devoted to You”. And those billboards of ONJ in those leather pants – o la la! Instant crush – and I remember, I came back home to Delhi clutching the Grease double album 😍

After Grease ONJ changed her persona, almost as if she had internalised the change that Sandy goes through at the end of the movie. The girl-next-door 70’s ONJ was replaced by the raunchy 80’s ONJ – with Xanadu and Magic and…Physical, Make a Move on me and Heart Attack. Fabulous songs that I’m sure a young Madonna must have been watching! Of course, we heard all these songs on the radio in Delhi as Geetanjali Iyer and Philip Neelam made sure our music education was never left incomplete.

ONJ lives in Oz and is a brave breast cancer survivor. Unfortunately, she was recently diagnosed with cancer for the third time. Praying for some Magic for her!