Hopelessly devoted

I can't believe she's sixty years old this week!

I was a fan of Olivia Newton-John from a very young age. For some reason, the budding drama queen in me took to this smiley blonde Country singer - despite her unhealthy association with Cliff Richard - and I loved her melodramatic and sentimental songs such as Take Me Home Country Roads and Sam. [I know, forgive me, I was only a child - and I hadn't discovered Dolly Parton yet...]

As a teenager I was shocked and amazed when she was cast as Sandy in the blockbuster Grease alongside a much newer crush of mine John Travolta [it was the infamous black pants scene in Saturday Night Fever I think...]. Surely she was too old to play a teenage virgin? How would her sugar-sweet vocals cope with a pop musical? The rest, as they say, is history.

Slightly less believable was her progress from Grease onwards - I mean, no-one could quite understand the popularity of Physical (apart from the sweaty men in the video). And what the hell was Xanadu all about?

Nowadays these lumps of kitsch are regarded as camp classics (or as Deep Dish calls Xanadu - "one of those Bad Movies We Love"), and slowly but surely Olivia Newton-John has entered the "gay icon" category - albeit at the lower end of the scale. Her self-mocking humour, the right level of tragedy in her life (breast cancer), and her penchant for rhinestones and younger men are all things we latch onto when choosing our divas, after all.

She sort of acknowledged this status in 2000 when she took the part of a faded lesbian singer in the film Sordid Lives, and she performed at the LA Gay Pride event this year...

I think I still have a soft spot for her.

Olivia Newton-John - Take Me Home Country Roads

Olivia Newton-John - Xanadu

Olivia Newton-John - Hopelessly Devoted to You

Guess mine is not the first heart broken
My eyes are not the first to cry
I'm not the first to know
There's just no getting over you

You know I'm just a fool who's willing
To sit around and wait for you
But, baby, can't you see
There's nothing else for me to do?
I'm hopelessly devoted to you

But now there's nowhere to hide
Since you pushed my love aside
I'm out of my head
Hopelessly devoted to you
Hopelessly devoted to you
Hopelessly devoted to you

My head is saying, "Fool, forget him."
My heart is saying, "Don't let go.
Hold on till the end."
And that's what I intend to do
I'm hopelessly devoted to you

But now there's nowhere to hide
Since you pushed my love aside
I'm out of my head
Hopelessly devoted to you
Hopelessly devoted to you
Hopelessly devoted to you

Olivia Newton-John official website