178. Cleveland Rocks!

178. “Magic” by Olivia Newton-John

The only way this song could have been better is if Jeff Lynne had collaborated on it. Come on, people! He's doing the B-side of the record, which by the way has Newton-John as lead singer on the title track. Why not let him do the entire album!

While this 1980 wall-of-sound song doesn’t have the irresistible sing-along quality of a Bee Gees song, it does show off Newton-John's full range of considerable vocal talent, from her vibrating, whispered low notes to her lung-busting, full-volume high notes. Also, her video people were able to come up with an idea that is a little more interesting than walking in circles--lots of soft-lit closeups of a headband and a missing ear ring, and an italian restaurant with a cigarette smoking audience who all seem to be waiting on their food and drinks, and bulging crotch shots of guitarists in tight shiny pants. It's a recipe for video magic!



Olivia has had a lot of hits, some of them good, and some of them so ridiculously awful that it pains me to remember them, especially “Physical.” It was a gigantic hit for Olivia, but I think it cemented in place a public perception of her as the…ummm…how do I put this in language that would be acceptable in church…as the whore of Babylon. This, I believe, is unfair to Olivia. Yes, she sang a song jam-packed with not-so-subtle sexual innuendo, but she isn’t the one that ate the jam. We, the listening public, along with a lot of horny DJs, are responsible for making “Physical” such a big hit. I think it would behoove us all to remember that Olivia tried to make fun of the sex-goddess image she was developing in the…

Video to "Physical."

This is a simple story in which she works out with a bunch of old fat men who end up collapsing on the floor in exhaustion. Olivia goes off to take a quick shower with her headband. But when she returns to the workout room wearing a fresh headband, she finds all of the men have suddenly changed into super-toned muscle men in banana hammocks who, after flexing and primping in front of her, realize that they're gay and leave the gym with each other, at which point Olivia grabs an old fat guy and heads out to play tennis. That's the message Olivia wanted us to remember from the song--she's not a sex-goddess with the omnipotent power of seduction, but only a simple tennis fan with the power to make you gay.

Personally, I prefer to think of Olivia as the lovely country girl in a pure white dress who can't help but sing "I Honestly Love You!"  From time to time, I also like to think of her as the faithful girlfriend who admits she's “Hopelessly Devoted To You.” And every now and then, I think of her as a young woman with high moral standards that shamelessly admits “You Light Up My Life.”

But back to “Magic.” It was a smash hit from the film Xanadu, which was about a place nobody dared to go that had lots and lots of neon lights. (Cleveland?) That’s it. That’s the story. At least the important part of it. There might be something in the film about a man and a woman struggling with inner conflict while, at the same time, struggling to resolve conflict with another person or the powers of nature. At least, that’s what my college literature teachers said most stories are about. I’m assuming something like that happened on the film. But I don’t really know for sure. All I know about the film I learned from the song lyrics. I don’t remember ever watching it, either in the theater or on video. However, I do remember that my father-in-law Max really liked it a lot when my beautiful wife (who is much more lovely than Olivia) made him sit down and watch it with her one day in our basement in Pocatello, while I studied for a graduate school class. Don’t know why I find Max’s enjoyment of the movie to be the most amusing piece of Xanadu trivia in my brain, but I do. The other piece of Xanadu trivia I know is that my high school friends and I used to replace the word “Xanadu” with our home town of “Arimo” whenever we sang along. And it sounded pretty bad when we strained to reach the high notes on the last word of the song:

“Aaaaarrrimmooh…Ooooh…OOOOOOHH! OOOoooohhhhh….

Yep. That’s the kind of wholesome fun we had in Arimo. No sexy girlfriends like Olivia. Of course, even if we had wanted to have meaningless sexual relationships with girls, we wouldn't have had the opportunity to do that in Arimo. All the young women in that town had very high moral standards like…well, you know…someone like Debby Boone. To find a woman with loose morals in a headband, we would have had to drive to a big city, like Malad. So, we stayed at home and drove tractor on the farm and spent our days thinking up new lyrics to songs on the Xanadu soundtrack. Good times…good times….