“Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture” 1978. I’m taking out one of the most iconic soundtracks ever in honor of Olivia Newton-John who died yesterday, August 8th (b. 1948, d. 2022). It’s also one of the soundtracks to my childhood. I was just shy of seven years old when the movie and soundtrack were released; I’m fairly certain I didn’t see the movie for at least a year or two later but a friend had the double LP and we listened to it so much I still have the entire thing memorized. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve probably seen the movie dozens and dozens of times in the past 40+ years. The soundtrack hit #1 pretty much everywhere in the world and remains one of the best-sellers of all-time.

My favorite tracks correspond directly to my top scenes in the movie: “You’re the One That I Want,” the duet between John Travolta and Newton-John, is endlessly fun to recreate…I totally remember doing the little high heel toe stamp out of the cigarette at 7 years old when I certainly didn’t smoke or wear heels. The song and scene could have contributed to my penchant for black leather jackets. I also love “Greased Lightin‘” (Travolta) — that scene with the bad boys (I had a little crush on Kenickie) and their cars may have twisted my psyche at a young age just a bit. Even though I really can’t stand Sha-Na-Na, the school dance competition to “Born to Hand Jive” was always a fave (I’m a major sucker for a good movie dance scene). Bad girl Rizzo (Stockard Channing) was one of my favorite characters so I still dig “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee.” Though I like it, the title track “Grease” always confused me: a movie set in the 50’s with a straight-up disco song (written by Bee Gee’s Barry Gibb and performed by Four Seasons’ Frankie Valli). From Wiki: “‘Grease’ was one of four songs in the film that had not been part of the original musical, and it was the only one not performed by the cast. The film’s director, Randal Kleiser, did not like the added songs because they did not fit the late-1950s/early 1960s style either musically or lyrically, and Kleiser had planned on a different composition by Charles Fox and Paul Williams (Fox having written the theme from Happy Days) before being overruled by the producers. The anachronism was especially true of ‘Grease,’ which used disco instrumentation and a contemporary 1970s beat but was, nonetheless, left in.” The song went to #1 in the US and #3 in the UK.