Later, he began working at the University of Edinburgh. He became a professor at Cambridge University. In 1935, Adolph Hitler personally terminated him from his position because he was born Jewish. He grew up to be a physicist at Gottingen University. In 1882, a Jewish baby was born in Germany named Max Born. Looks like the link may not work, but here is the text: You know you have whatever’s mine to give you It’s this and so much more that makes me love you The smile that says “hello, it’s good to see you” The hands that run their fingers through my hair The arms that open wide to hold me closer You came when I was happy in your sunshineīefore too long I built my world around youĪnd I prayed you’d love enough of me to stay If You Love Me, Let Me Know (the album) was her first to top the Billboard 200 chart, an accomplishment she would repeat in record time. The album also featured the American debut of ‘ I Honestly Love You,’ Newton-John’s first #1 hit and one of her signature songs. The song (today’s SOTD) was the title cut of an album compiling the best work on her prior three albums. She scored her first top ten hit with the title track of the country-pop album Let Me Be There in 1973, then broke into the top five with ‘If You Love Me (Let Me Know)’ a year later. As an Australian singing crossover songs, she wasn’t exactly embraced by the Nashville community.Īudiences were a different matter. In her early career, Newton-John tiptoed the line between country and pop, finding success on both the Adult Contemporary and Country charts and winning a Best Country Female Grammy. This week I will honor the great British-Australian talent by featuring five of her songs. I love her iconic turn as Sandy in Grease and I count at least one of her songs among my all-time favorites. I had a childhood crush on her that has persisted to this day. A week ago today, beloved singer-actress Olivia Newton-John passed away at just 73, presumably succumbing to the cancer she has battled for more than 30 years. Newton-John passed away in 2022 at the age of 73.Last week I featured five unexpected performances by Joni Mitchell, an artist many thought would never perform again due to health problems. In doing so, she shifted once again-as so many great artists do-from a pop icon to an advocate and a beacon of hope for survivors. In 1980, she starred in the fantasy film Xanadu and, collaborating with orchestral rockers ELO, experimented with disco for its soundtrack before crossing over into R&B and electronic pop with 1981’s “Physical.” In the ensuing years, her music took on a particularly personal tone as she wrote and sang candidly of loss and her own decades-long fight against breast cancer (she also founded the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre in Melbourne in 2008). More dizzying change-ups followed, and each explored new facets of Newton-John's range and artistic inclinations. But just as soon as that success came, she ditched her decidedly mellow image for another star-making turn as the demure-girl-turned-dynamo Sandy Olsson in the 1978 film adaptation of Grease, finger-snapping her way alongside John Travolta through hard-to-resist sing-alongs built on rock ’n’ roll nostalgia. Those tunes were a mere staging ground for 1974’s soft-focus pop smash “I Honestly Love You,” which put Newton-John on a starward trajectory. That she won a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance in 1974 only cemented her arrival. Her early forays into country-embodied by 1973’s “Let Me Be There” and the following year's “If You Love Me (Let Me Know)”-rankled Nashville purists, not only because of their smoothed-out take on the genre, but also because they were sung by someone from far outside country’s heavily guarded gates. But the gentle, plaintive voice she was honing was a manifestation of a deeper vision for pop music. Born in Cambridge, England, in 1948, Newton-John spent most of her childhood in Australia, and already had designs on stardom as a teen in the ’60s, performing in song contests and on variety shows. Perhaps the only singer to anticipate both Madonna’s early bump-and-grind anthems and Taylor Swift’s winsome country ballads, Olivia Newton-John had a hitmaking path filled with unexpected reinventions.
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