ONJ was ‘anxious’ about sexy song ‘Physical’: ‘I tried to get them to stop it’
View(s):When Olivia Newton-John recorded her 11th studio album, Physical, 40 years ago, she’d already begun her evolution from wholesome ingenue to sexually assertive pop-rock provocateur — a life-imitating-art metamorphosis not unlike that of her Sandy character in Grease — with her previous album, 1978’s ‘Totally Hot’.
But no one, not even the singer herself, was prepared for the sexy image makeover that was ushered in by Physical’s title track — when a sweat banded, hot ‘n’ bothered Olivia straight-up told the object of her desire, “There’s nothing left to talk about, unless it’s horizontally.” It’s perhaps a tame lyric by 2021 standards, but it was downright scandalous when it was released on Sept. 28, 1981, two days after the singer’s 33rd birthday.
At first, Newton-John actually rejected “Physical” — which was originally intended for a “macho male rock figure like Rod Stewart,” according its co-writer, Steve Kipner, and later passed over by a more fiercely rock ‘n’ roll-leaning diva, Tina Turner. And Newton-John admits to Yahoo Entertainment that even after she agreed to record it, she had second thoughts. “I was really anxious about it, because I thought I’d gone too far,” she explains. “And then I tried to get [the record label] to stop it. And then it was too late. It was out there in the public.”
Newton-John soon realized that there was no turning back. So, worrying that the song’s aggressive sexuality might ruin her image (the single was in fact banned by some U.K. radio stations and in more conservative U.S. markets, like Salt Lake City, for its suggestive content), she came up with a plan. “I thought, ‘Well, you know what? I need to do a video, and I need to do it about exercise — that will take away from, you know, what they’re thinking it’s about.’”