Clearly Love review
Olivia Newton-John, Clearly Love (MCA)
Just when the musical world is critically hamstrung with a terminal case of non-creativity, Olivia Newton-John appears to compound the situation.
Olivia, after a brief respite to mellow from her skein of commercial hits has swamped the record stores with her latest Clearly Love. The saccharine quality of Newton-John’s (Fig to her fans) neatly conceals any intonation that might betray a trace of emotion or human feeling. Her style is so sweet and sugary that a label accompanying the record warns diabetics not to listen to more than 30 seconds of Clearly Love. Who said record corporations were heartless savages anyhow!
Yet the vast legions of critics have been blind to Fig’s deliberate style of vocalization. To the critic with an inquiring ear and a probing and razor sharp mind I (like this humble critic’s) the reason is only too obvious.
Olivia is craftily mocking the mechanization and de humanization of a post-industrial society run by greedy capitalists. It is a tribute to Fig’s talents she can hide such an urgent message behind a shabby and plastic veneer.
But Olivia isn’t satisfied with merely playing the role of the scathing social critic. Oh no, she also understands the revolutionary potential of rock and roll. Her rendition of “Summertime Blues” shakes with sweat (yes, Olivia perspires occasionally) and rolls with raunch showing the Who, Blue Cheer and that old, fat fool Elvis just how the song should be done. It is a triumph, an instant classic.
Rumors are circulating in rockdom that John Denver and Fig, for the sake of eugenics and the music world in general, plan to rear a covey of androgenous offspring. The possibility of such a union is mind boggling. Just think, it could be the start of a super race of blonde haired, blue eyed creatures like the King Family.
But until speculation is given birth to by reality, Olivia Newton-John’s Clearly Love is no cheap affair or decadent infatuation. It displays all the depth and maturity of Helen Reddy in her “I Am Woman” period. Right on Fig.
By Otis B. Driftwood
Editor’s note - I have never heard anyone else refer to Olivia as “Fig” - very strange</p>