She had spent the ’70s as the wholesome good girl at the heart of AM radio, soft and gentle and certainly inoffensive. Of course, none of this is what anyone was expecting from Olivia Newton-John in 1981. In other words, it was perfect - particularly from the vantage of early MTV, where the golden rule was quickly established: Ensure that nobody can ever hear your song without also picturing the video again. It’s campy, it’s sexy, and it’s totally incomprehensible from a narrative standpoint. Set in a gym that looks more like the final level of an early arcade game - the kind of sharply geometrically defined, impossibly shiny-surfaced room that only seems to exist in ’80s music videos - Newton-John leads a group workout with a bunch of oiled-down muscle men, who inexplicably turn into overweight klutzes (and then back again) over the course of the video. #Olivia newton john physical tvSo did the rest of its parent LP of the same name, actually: Physical was released as a whole video album, a pioneering practice in ’81, which earned Newton-John a primetime Let’s Get Physical TV special (and, eventually, the second-ever video of the year Grammy.) But the title track’s clip was the crown jewel. “Physical” debuted on September 28, 1981, less than two months after the seismic launch of MTV, and oh boy did it have an accompanying visual ready for the occasion.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |