Don't Stop Believin' album review
Olivia Newton-John, Don’t Stop Believin’ (MCA)
Over the summer, in a review of Leslie Duncan’s album, Moonbathing, I said that Olivia Newton-John couldn’t relate to her listeners. Well folks, I’m going to do something no sane reviewer ever does I’m going to eat my words.
It was then thought that Olivia, because she was so perfect, wasn’t subjected to the trials and woes of the average human being. Olivia seemed so real, so beautiful, that she became dream-like to me. She was almost artificial and plastic.
With the album, Don’t Stop Believin’, Olivia’s proximity to perfection is not lessened but qualified. Since this is the first album of Olivia’s I have reviewed, previous opinions of her have not been based on the fact of listening intently to one of her releases. Subsequent to this time, my opinions of Olivia had been formed on the criterion of imagination. As Olivia’s image so sweetly pervaded the radio speakers, the view of her was to build that sweetness to a pedastal.
But the songs of Don’t Stop Believin’ relieve Olivia from the pedestal. Olivia becomes a beatiful person, not merely an overblown sugared image. Lord, human qualities actually make the album.
So take heed folks, the following is a course on how to produce a human being. The theme of a prayerful fantasy is, of course, an integral small part of the recipe and is envisioned in the song “Hey Mr. Dreammaker”:
“Hey, Mr. Dreammaker send me a dream
This one is over
It’s not what it seems
So tonight when I turn out the light
Send me a new dream tonight.”
This feeling is then balanced and mellowed by the starkness of reality in “A Thousand Conversations”:
“You Whiled away the hours
Making promises that might have just changed the world
if they’d only turned out right
But now I’m a little wise,
I can even raise a laugh
at the funny face you pulled on a faded photograph.”
Also present in Don’t Stop Believin’ is love ending in warm-hearted kindness in “Compassionate Man,” a revealing innocence of a child’s thoughts in “New Born Babe.” Throughout the album, Olivia runs the gamut of human emotion.
One can, I suppose, retort that since she does not write her songs, the reality of Olivia promoted is false. Truly, it is the interpreting of song which is the crux of communicating reality, not necessarily the writing.
Additionally, Olivia does write a song on Don’t Stop Believin’ the first tune she has written since “Changes” on the If You Love Me Let Me Know album. It is a crisp, clear piece called, “Love You Hold The Key.” All the album’s songs have this lucid quality within them.
The clarity is appropriate on the album, moreso than on other releases because of the real-life interpretation of song.
Kudos should go to John Farrar for producing the album. It may be Olivia’s best. -Harold Goldberg