The LP of the Week Making A Good Thing Better
Translation:
As if living up to the title of her latest full-length album, “Making a Good Thing Better,” blonde Olivia Newton-John has made a beautiful album, with admirable versatility, which inevitably deserves warm praise.
We know everything about Olivia: that she’s very pretty, that she’s Australian, that she has several gold records, that she has a defined line of good taste in her previous works, and that she’s possibly one of the best voices in the United Kingdom, although she’s currently being shown exclusively in the United States.
She cultivates melodic ballads, and in this latest full-length album, the slow and smooth rhythm stands out throughout. Her leap into the American market, so tempting for all English-speaking performers, served to polish her style, filling it with easy, commercial elements like the Eurovision hit “Long Live Love,” to a ballad to everyone’s taste, which is currently her main focus.
Many interesting things can be gleaned from this “Making a Good Thing Better.” The title track has a gentle beginning, then moves into a spirited awakening where the rhythm unleashes and Olivia’s strength is heard in the catchy chorus that is repeated over and over again.
On the second side, we also find a popular song from the 1960s, the well-known “Ring of Fire,” with a more rhythmic base in this version by Olivia. The next side is completed by the inevitable “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” from the rock opera “Evita,” also this time full of emotion, in Olivia’s soft and nuanced voice.
Side two of the album is pure melody, except for the opening track, “Sad Songs,” which has a little, but not too much, rhythm; the rest are melodious ballads.
Also on this occasion, just like her previous work, Olivia performs a song she wrote herself, “Don’t Ask a Friend.”
Her current record producer, ex-Shadows member John Farrar, also has a single song on this album, “Coolin’ Down,” but he accompanies the rest of the tracks with the strings of the acoustic or electric guitar.
“Making a Good Thing Better” is, in short, a summary of the brilliant career that its interpreter is having in the United States.