Just Another Pretty Voice
Building Confidence - To prepare for her star billing in the fall in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Reno showrooms, Olivia Newton-John has been playing main showrooms as an opening act and playing fairs and concerts as headliner.
“This is a very embarrassing thing for me to talk about,” confessed Olivia Newton-John in a late morning interview at her manager’s Sunset Strip office. The fast-talking, 26-year-old pop singer was trying to duck out of a discussion about the effects of her beauty on her career. “I know I’m pretty,” she admitted sheepishly, “This may sound silly, but, being pretty can create problems and doubts for a female singer. Some people don’t take you seriously because they think you’re a model who is just playing at having a career.”
“In one review, someone said I couldn’t sing, but that I would make a terrific model or air hostess. That really hurt and upset me.”
“Though I was doing fairly well, my music wasn’t taken seriously for a long time. Some people don’t even bother, to listen to you because they assume you can’t be pretty and be a good singer at the same time. Not to be taken seriously when you think you’re a serious artist is very frustrating. I went through that for a long time. If a pretty singer gets popu1ar, there’s another problem. Is it you or your looks that got you where you are? When you don’t know whether people like you for your singing or your looks, it really shakes your self-confidence.”
Miss Newton-John said that as recently as three months ago she was plagued by lack of confidence which may have been rooted in the insecurity that sprang up during her years of being regarded as just another pretty singer. The problem is related to her engagements on the Las Vegas-Lake Tahoe-Reno hotel circuit. She began playing main showrooms last year as an opening act, but is still an opening act because she is fulfilling old contractual obligations. She will be headlining these showrooms in the fall but admitted that until recently she was unsure of her ability to be a success as a headliner.
“I didn’t have enough confidence in myself,” she said. “As an opening act, you only have to play a half an hour. As a headliner, you have to do an hour show. That requires a big jump in confidence. I’ve been building my confidence in the last year by playing fairs and concerts as a headliner. Before that I was working off and on and I wasn’t always the main attraction. That wasn’t doing much for my confidence. One problem was that I still thought of myself the way I was before I had some success. I used to be very shy on stage and terrified of falling over my feet. Speaking to an audience used to terrify me, but I’m pretty much over that now.”
Miss Newton-John’s record sales should be a considerable boost to her ego. She is now one of the best-selling artists in the business. Her last two MCA albums, “If You Love Me, Let Me Know” and “Have You Never Been Mellow,” have each sold more than a million copies. She has four gold singles and will probably be awarded a fifth for her current hit, “Please Mr. Please.”
Miss Newton-John, who was born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Australia, came to America a few years ago. She had her first hit in this country, “If Not for You,” before her arrival. Gleefully, she remarked, “Nobody here knew what, I looked like, so people bought my records because they liked the music, not because of how I look. What an incredible feeling that, was for me. It really boosted my confidence in my abilities as a singer.”
She has a whispery vocal style and a voice that doesn’t have much power or range. Though she acknowledges her shortcomings as a singer, she is now fairly convinced her popularity is based on her singing. “I’m pretty sure now that I’ve been a success because I can sing, not because I’m pretty,” she said, “I know I’m not a great, singer, but I’m improving. I can interpret a lyric now much better than I could a year or two ago.”
“The only way I can sing is very gently. When I was starting out about 10 years ago, big voices were popular. To get anywhere, you had to sing loud and strong. But I was singing folk songs in clubs and was singing gently and quietly, like I do now. I tried to sing the other way for a while, but it wasn’t me. When I went into the studio for the first time, my producer told me to sing gently, so I went back to that style.”
“I’d like to improve my voice, but I just have to do it by working hard and hoping it will get better with age. I can’t do it, with voice lessons. I tried that twice, once when I had just started singing and once when I was part of a group called Toomorrow that was being groomed to be the new Monkees, I didn’t stick with the lessons very long either time. I don’t have the patience for lessons.”
Some may think Miss Newton-John may have been driven to embrace feminism because of her experiences fighting the “pretty singer” stereotype and climbing to the top of a business that until recently had few woman stars. But she is not a feminist. “I don’t associate what I went through with the feminist movement,” she said. “I don’t really know that much about the feminist movement because I haven’t paid that much attention to it. I agree that, equal pay for equal work is a good idea, but that’s where my interest ends. That’s probably a very narrow-minded view because there are a lot of woman who have problems with getting jobs and being independent. But I don’t have those problems so I haven’t bothered to get involved in the feminist movement.”
Just before the interview ended, Miss Newton-John, reflecting on some of her comments, shook her head solemnly and said, “I’ve probably come across as an unconfident little nervous wreck who is anti-feminist and very wrapped up in her own silly little problems. That’s not really me. But that very sweet image I have is not really me either. The real me is somewhere in between.”