I hope this isn't a thread hijack, but what track would YOU have released as the lead single from "Making A Good Thing Better"? Would you rename the album?
That's an interesting question. None of the songs on the album really stand out as "single" material to me. I'd probably go with "Sad Songs" as the lead single, as it was uptempo, catchy, and very much pop-oriented. My favorite song from the album is "If Love Is Real," but I don't see that as making for a good single. I doubt I would have renamed the album. "Making a Good Thing Better" is a pretty decent name for an album.
Making A Good Thing Better should have been the subtitle for Totally Hot. I’d agree that MAGTB isn’t packed with single material. The title track is a decent song, but if something like Don’t Stop Believin’ failed the year before, there was no way this was going to set the charts on fire... Sad Songs might have done OK. The Alessi Brothers who’d written it had a UK hit in 1977 with Oh Lori and it looked like they may be a thing for a while. If I’d gone for a ballad lead single from MAGTB, perhaps Slow Dancing would have done well? Although the album is overall strong and quite beautiful, Olivia was starting to struggle securing big hits and of course the experience wasn’t helped by her lawsuit with MCA and her inability to promote the album due to filming Grease when it was released.
"Slow Dancing" would have made for the best single from the album if Olivia had released her version before Johnny Rivers' version became a hit. His version of the song wasn't a huge hit, but it did well enough that it probably would have prevented Olivia's version from gaining any traction on the charts. I've often wondered if Olivia's version was intended to be a single, but that idea was then nixed when Johnny Rivers released his version.
I don’t recall his version. It can’t have been a hit here. Slow Dancing would have made a nice single for Olivia. Not to mention a good follow up to Sam which had been her biggest hit of 1976/7.
Great thread! By the way, it's a shame that MCA was so album-centric. I think there are some great Olivia songs that deserved to be released as singles. And her albums would be much more consistent if she and Farrar were allowed to take their time after HYNBM.
It was how it was done then. Many artists were contracted to do 2 albums per year. Makes you wonder what the record companies were thinking... It could only lead to burn out and lack of interest from the public. In Olivia’s case, some albums could have been better.. Clearly Love, for example, as sweet as it is, you just know John and Olivia weren’t ready to make that record. The flip side is we have more albums to enjoy from Olivia’s golden-throated phase. Even if every album isn’t perfect, they’re still great and we love them anyway.
IIRC "Don't Stop Believin"" did reasonably well in the US and Canada. Back to "Making A Good Thing Better". I agree "Sad Songs" was a strong choice for single. If "It's So Easy To Begin" had been a duet - another single possibility. Its writer - Jules Shears - went on to write Cyndi Lauper's "All Through The Night", The Bangles "If She Knew What She Wants" and Alison Moyet's "Whispering Your Name". My least favorite track is "Coolin' Down". Crazy thought: what if "Ring of Fire" had been a single? It is country but it rocks more than anything previously from Olivia. Might have been sacrilegious for Johnny Cash fans.
"Ring of Fire" could have had potential in 1977, given that other artists were having success covering "oldies" at that time. Linda Ronstadt had big hits in 1977 with "Blue Bayou" and "It's So Easy," so it's not a stretch to think that Olivia might have had similar success with "Ring of Fire." Johnny Cash fans would have no doubt found it to be sacrilege, but Olivia had faced backlash from the country music establishment before and it didn't seem to stop her from having chart success.
Me,too.. Olivia probaly had the edge with her catchier uptempo songs like YOU"RE THE ONE THAT I WANT and PHYSICAL (I have both, PHYSICAL itself on a 45!) her biggest, whuile Kasren Carpetner stuck with slower songs (nothing wrong with that! )
While many of her fans list Soul Kiss as a stumble in her discography I think it's one of the jewels in her crown. She meets every challenge on the album, deals with interesting subject matter while keeping her integrity in tact & it simply sounds like the next logical step after conquering the pop market with increasingly mature material. Having said that, I think the album's promo was mishandled. With all its expectation there also was panic to make it a hit among the new hitmakers of the day. Sure, "Soul Kiss" is a terrific song & Olivia handles it effortlessly. However, the initial single should have been its b-side, "Electricity", a track that was left off most configurations of the album. It totally updated a familiar Olivia sound, sounding like "Heart Attack" through a 1985 lense, is a killer track on its own, all while sounding like classic ONJ. I firmly believe that had that been the path taken radio would have been open to the album's 2nd fab single, "Toughen Up", & the album itself would have had a longer life--as might have her remaining 80s hit potential. Oh well, no one asked me.
Maybe it's because I'm big on making mixtapes, but I wish that the "make 2 or 3 albums a year" philosophy had never gone out of style. I like having as many songs as possible from my favourite artists, and if I'm not wild about the original configurations they were released in, I can make my own album sequences. Plus, there's something to be said for having frequent snapshots of an artist (even if they're in a transitional phase), as opposed to getting a (possibly overworked) portrait every three to four years.
I am so with you on this point. How many albums will someone like Justin Timberlake make in his whole career at the rate he is going? Maybe ten albums? It is ridiculous as it does not give an artist enough room to explore his whole musical muse lying within his soul. Thanks to the "2 or 3 albums a year" philosophy, we have 60 albums to explore over on that great Elvis thread that @mark winstanley started a while back.
I am going to have to give that album another listen as I absolutely love the title track, the album cover and the inner sleeve artwork. I would love to know how our thread starter @Bobby Morrow feels about the quality of the overall album as I find him to be very objective and a man of very astute taste, but based on your own enthusiasm for the album, I am going to give it another listen.
Great post. I am one of the very few who thinks Soul Kiss is her finest moment. There's not one track on there that I don't like. One of the finest albums of the 80's.
Don’t Stop Believin’ only made #33 in America. I remember being really surprised as I thought it would be a top 10 record. MAGTB, IIRC, had decent reviews. However, the track singled out as the poorest in the UK weekly mag Record Mirror was Ring Of Fire! They described it as ‘the kind of plastic country that makes you cringe’. Ironically, they also picked out Coolin’ Down as one of the best tracks. Maybe Ring Of Fire could have been a hit... I suppose compared to the rest of the album it could be seen as a throwaway, but you never know. Ultimately, no one really put much effort into promoting/thinking about singles for MAGTB. They kind of just let it die.
Years ago, we did an Olivia albums thread (closed now, I think). You can see what I thought of all Olivia’s albums there. Soul Kiss was a long time coming after Physical. Something she paid a price for. I really liked it when it came out and thought it would place a few hits on the chart. As the album fizzled out, I suppose my feelings changed a bit. These days I still play it regularly. I consider it one of her true ‘pop’ albums. The synthy, rather cold production works against the ballads I think and the songs aren’t as uniformly strong as the ones on Physical. In the promo feature in Billboard at the time of the album’s release, Olivia freely admitted it wasn’t what she wanted to record. She said she wanted to do an album of ballads, but the MCA suggested she do something more commercial. I consider Soul Kiss part of Olivia’s golden run. I prefer it to, say, The Rumour and Gaia. Sadly, the botched promotion campaign and the weak videos didn’t help when a fresh(!) young Madonna was doing all these things perfectly in 1985.
Yes indeed, that really shocked me too. Sometimes it just is hard to figure out why a great song somehow fails to hit higher on the pop charts, but it did make it to number one in the U.S. on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart and #14 on the Billboard Country chart, so there was some significant crossover action. Who would have guessed that the great single Sam would end up placing so much higher on the Pop chart? I personally love both songs as well as the production work by John Farrar on the whole album.
Olivia treats Don’t Stop Believin’ like it was one of her big hits. She still performs it in concert. Which she doesn’t do with Something Better To Do. As you know, she named her (excellent) memoir after the song too. Sam made #6 here. It was her only UK hit after I Honestly Love You (#22!) until the Grease songs in 1978.
I think both "Sad Songs" and "You Won't See Me Cry" would have made great singles from Making A Good Thing Better. It's a terrific album, unfortunately bogged down by two bad tracks on Side 1 ("Ring of Fire" and "Argentina") and a poor choice of single.
It really is a great song and that uplifting melody and positive lyrics will quickly put you in a good mood no matter what type of day you have been having. I have always loved that song and her vocals are stellar on it as well.
It’s fair to say that if Olivia was a young act who put out a #1 album (and single) like Have You Never Been Mellow today, no one would expect a new release from her for at least 18 months. Clearly Love came out 6 months later! And if I’m getting the dates right, Come On Over came out 5 months after that!
Speaking of Soul Kiss (as we were) dear old @Chris_Sydney started this 30th anniversary thread a few years ago. It’s closed now, but you can read what we all thought of the album if you want. 30th anniversary of Olivia Newton-John's 'Soul Kiss' And here’s my look back at the Physical album. This is still open for posts. Olivia Newton-John Physical Poll. Pick Your Favourites & Discuss.
