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The Grandma wants to remember her. It is the best homage it can be done. Remember her and do not forget her music and her activism.
Olivia, we will see us in Xanadu.
Dame Olivia Newton-John AC DBE (26 September 1948-8 August 2022) was a British-Australian singer, actress and activist.
She was a four-time Grammy Award winner whose music career included five number one hits and another ten Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100, and two Billboard 200 number one albums, If You Love Me, Let Me Know (1974) and Have You Never Been Mellow (1975).
Eleven of her singles (including two Platinum) and 14 of her albums (including two Platinum and four 2× Platinum) have been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). With global sales of more than 100 million records, Newton-John is one of the best-selling music artists from the second half of the 20th century to the present.
In 1978, Newton-John starred in the musical film Grease, whose soundtrack remains one of the world's best-selling albums of recorded music. It features two major hit duets with co-star John Travolta: You're the One That I Want -which ranks as one of the best-selling singles of all time- and Summer Nights. Her signature solo recordings include the Record of the Year Grammy winner I Honestly Love You (1974) and Physical (1981) -Billboard's Top Hot 100 Single of the 1980s. Her other major hit singles include If Not for You (1971), Let Me Be There (1973), If You Love Me (Let Me Know) (1974), Have You Never Been Mellow (1975), Sam (1977), Hopelessly Devoted to You (also from Grease), A Little More Love (1978) and, from the 1980 film Xanadu, Magic and Xanadu (with the Electric Light Orchestra).
Newton-John was an activist for environmental and animal rights causes, and advocated for breast cancer research.
More information: Olivia Newton-John Foundation
Newton-John was born on 26 September 1948 in Cambridge, England, to Welshman Brinley "Bryn" Newton-John and Irene Helene. Her Jewish maternal grandfather, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Max Born, fled with his wife and children to Britain from Germany before World War II to escape the Nazi Regime.
Newton-John's maternal grandmother was of paternal Jewish ancestry as well; through her, she was a third cousin of comedian Ben Elton. Her maternal great-grandfather was the jurist Victor Ehrenberg and her matrilineal great-grandmother's father was the jurist Rudolf von Jhering.
Newton-John's father was an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park who took Rudolf Hess into custody during World War II. After the war, he became the headmaster of the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys and was in this position when Olivia was born.
Newton-John was the youngest of three children, following her brother Hugh (1939-2019), a medical doctor, and her sister Rona (1941-2013), an actress who was married to Olivia's Grease co-star Jeff Conaway (from 1980 until their divorce in 1985).
In 1954, when she was six, Newton-John's family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father worked as a professor of German and as the master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. She attended Christ Church Grammar School in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra and then the University High School in Parkville.
Newton-John released her first solo album, If Not for You, in 1971. The title track, written by Bob Dylan and previously recorded by former Beatle George Harrison for his 1970 album All Things Must Pass, was her first international hit.
Her follow-up single, Banks of the Ohio, was a top 10 hit in the UK and Australia. She was voted Best British Female Vocalist two years in a row by the magazine Record Mirror. She made frequent appearances on Cliff Richard's weekly show It's Cliff Richard and starred with him in the telefilm The Case.
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Her second American album, named Let Me Be There after the hit single, was actually her third in Britain, where the LP was known as Music Makes My Day. The record was also called Let Me Be There in Australia; however, the US and Canadian versions featured an alternate track list that mixed new cuts with selections from Olivia and also recycled six songs from If Not for You, which was going out of print.
In 1974, Newton-John represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Long Live Love. The song was chosen for Newton-John by the British public out of six possible entries. Newton-John finished fourth at the contest, held in Brighton, behind the Swedish winning entry, Waterloo by ABBA. All six Eurovision contest song candidates -Have Love, Will Travel, Lovin' You Ain't Easy, Long Live Love, Someday, Angel Eyes and Hands Across the Sea- were recorded by Newton-John and included on her Long Live Love album, her first for the EMI Records label.
In America, Newton-John's success in country music sparked a debate among purists, who took issue with a foreigner singing country-flavoured pop music being classed with native Nashville artists.
In addition to her Grammy for Let Me Be There, Newton-John was also named the Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year in 1974, defeating more established Nashville-based nominees Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Tanya Tucker, as well as Canadian artist Anne Murray. This protest, in part, led to the formation of the short-lived Association of Country Entertainers (ACE).
Newton-John was eventually supported by the country music community. Stella Parton, Dolly's sister, recorded Ode to Olivia and Newton-John recorded her 1976 album, Don't Stop Believin', in Nashville.
More information: The Guardian
Newton-John's career soared after she starred in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease in 1978.
She was offered the lead role of Sandy after meeting producer Allan Carr at a dinner party at Helen Reddy's home. Disillusioned by her Toomorrow experience and concerned that she was too old to play a high school senior (she was 28 during the filming of Grease), Newton-John insisted on a screen test with the film's co-star, John Travolta. The film accommodated Newton-John's Australian accent by recasting her character from the play's original American Sandy Dumbrowski to Sandy Olsson, an Australian who holidays in the US and then moves there with her family. Newton-John previewed some of the film's soundtrack during her second American network television special, Olivia, featuring guests ABBA and Andy Gibb.
Grease became the biggest box-office hit of 1978. The soundtrack album spent 12 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 and yielded three Top 5 singles for Newton-John: the platinum You're the One That I Want with John Travolta, the gold Hopelessly Devoted to You and the gold Summer Nights with John Travolta and the film's cast.
She was a performer on the 1979 Music for UNICEF Concert for the UN's International Year of the Child televised worldwide. During the concert, artists performed songs for which they donated their royalties, some in perpetuity, to benefit the cause. She was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Environment Programme.
In 2002, Newton-John was also inducted into Australia's ARIA Hall of Fame.
In 2008, she raised funds to help build the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne, Australia.
On 8 August 2022, Newton-John died at her Santa Ynez Valley home in California, aged 73.
Newton-John was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1979 New Year Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to charity, cancer research and entertainment.
More information: The Guardian
An everlasting world and you're here with me,
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