With her tan complexion, blue eyes and sandy blonde hair, Olivia Newton-John personified the “all-American girl” despite being an English lass of Jewish descent who spent most of her formative years in Australia. But her exterior appearance was what initially mattered most to the executives and the masses. An appearance that established her journey to international fame, itself setting a precedent in “star-making” that would later become the norm as it befell the likes of Britney and Beyoncé, both of whom endured “factory processes” of being churned out in variety show or girl group form before transcending into industry powerhouses.
For Newton-John, the process of “Becoming” began in her teens (as it must when one wants to metamorphose into a pop star “in time”) by appearing regularly on local Australian TV shows like The Happy Show and Time for Terry. But it wasn’t until 1965, when she won a talent contest on Sing, Sing, Sing (proving that American Idol-esque fare has been around since the dawn of modern media) that Newton-John’s career got a push toward something more “worldwide.” For the prize was a trip to Britain, her homeland, where she recorded her first single for Decca Records in 1966, called “Till You Say You’ll Be Mine.” From there, it was a series of gigs in European nightclubs, followed by joining up with a group called Toomorrow (with the band starring in an eponymous movie that was something of a precursor to the absurdity of Xanadu). This series of false starts led, at last, to her releasing her first solo album in 1971, If Not For You.
With her second album being “skipped over” in America, Newton-John’s initial billing as a country singer to U.S. audiences of course ruffled the feathers of “purist” listeners who didn’t want some “foreigner” singing “their kind” of music. They apparently needed the newsflash that many Americans are Brits by lineage. But that “contempt” blew over as Newton-John’s sound increasingly evolved to align with the pop/disco sensibilities of the decade. This also included ultra-cheesy ballads like 1974’s “I Honestly Love You.”
Taking in her zig-zagging trajectory through this hindsight-oriented lens, perhaps only Cher can understand the grueling slog of “finding her niche” in the 60s and transcending into an undeniable star by the 70s. Cher, too, would comprehend slightly before Olivia what it meant to “be around for so long” as a woman in the public eye before such a “phenomenon” was actually made more socially acceptable by subsequent female pop stars—most notably, Madonna (“I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around”), Kylie Minogue (Newton-John’s friend, look-alike and fellow cancer survivor), Beyoncé, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. All “stadium musicians” who keep coming back (even when the public might think they’re on “permanent hiatus”) with album after album in an industry that demands women remain forever “fresh” a.k.a. twenty-five and under.
Newton-John provided an early blueprint for women in music who wanted to “dare” to evolve and change when the twentieth century was still “mid.” And, in contrast to Cher, she didn’t start out with a man at her side to help with her name recognition. Even if Newton-John had something of the “one-trick pony” tendency to flip-flop between either “good” or “bad” girl as a seeming homage to her most iconic incarnation: Sandy Olsson in Grease. Having waffled about taking the role at first—being aware that playing a high schooler at twenty-eight was more than just “a stretch”—the commitment to Sandy would eventually become the greatest thing she could have done for herself in terms of securing “icon status.” It was also a testament to the synergy that occurred between music and film when a pop star agreed to bridge the gap between both. Further examples of this would arise with Madonna in Evita, Christina Aguilera and Cher in Burlesque and Lady Gaga in yet another remake of A Star Is Born, each musical film augmenting the dollar signs in the suits’ eyes as they started to realize how extra profitable it could be to have a pop girl double as a movie star for soundtrack sale potential alone. Naturally, the formula didn’t always turn out spun gold, as evidenced by Britney in Crossroads and Mariah in Glitter.
While Newton-John might have come into the 80s hot with Physical and its lead single of the same name, by the mid-80s, her career had stalled again, with the decade seeming to allow for only one “comeback queen” of the 60s and 70s in the form of Cher garnering a hit with 1989’s “If I Could Turn Back Time.” An ironic and fitting title, to be sure, for if any female pop star could “turn back time,” they undeniably would, thanks to a culture that only worships them to the highest degree when they are at their most “nubile.” And many have done their best to do just that without a proverbial “magic wand,” instead turning to fillers and plastic surgery as someone such as Madonna unapologetically has (well, that and some intense Andy Warhol-inspired photo filtering).
Newton-John, like Madonna, either sidestepped or denied the question of having plastic surgery, as the unspoken rules of “aging pop stardom” appear to enforce (i.e., “First rule of having plastic surgery is that we don’t talk about how I got plastic surgery”). But being that she was a woman who did not “put herself away” or hole up in her Santa Barbara abode simply because she had committed the so-called “sin” of aging as a pop star, a little bit of “facial maintenance” was to be expected for remaining in the public eye. So scrutinizing as it is.
And yet, Newton-John, for as “hyper-studied” by the media as she was, still managed to achieve an impossible feat for many “garden-variety” singers who don’t end up having as much longevity: making whatever the fuck kind of music she wanted and still sustaining a legion of fans that remained hopelessly devoted to her. And that coup, of sorts, was a blueprint she helped create for those few long-lasting pop stars that would come after her.
