Like every Australian daughter of the 80s, I worshiped Olivia Newton-John. I’d spend hours in my bedroom wearing a Physical-style headband and legwarmers, listening to the cassette of her greatest hits and singing magic into my hairbrush.
On weekend trips to Video Ezy, I’d make a beeline for the VHS musicals and hire grease and Xanadu on alternate weekends. I’d watch until the tape went funny or my brother had a tantrum about being denied access to the VCR to watch Return of the Jedi.
Olivia Newton-John pictured in 1978 at a press conference to promote Grease.Credit:Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Then during the week at primary school, we’d act out the scenes.
Parents were pretty loose about what their kids watched back then. None of us understood, but still dutifully enacted, Kenickie’s reference to his “25 cent insurance policy” during a steamy back-seat romp with Rizzo. We’d chant the “lousy with virginity” song at the top of our voices.
Journalist Jordan Baker with Olivia Newton-John.
But Olivia was the only one we cared about.
That voice, which gives me shivers even now. That face. And that accent, which she kept, and which showed girls in suburban Australia – always at least six months behind the rest of the world in everything back then – that one of us could make it over there.
We all wanted to be her. Countless backyard baby pools had to be emptied after a young girl in a white nightdress dunked pieces of paper in it, and peered into an imaginary photo of Danny singing Hopelessly Devoted to You.
Our ardent renditions of summer nights burst eardrums, both in the 1980s and at retro nightclubs in the decades since. And then there was the old smooching trick, when you’d face the wall, cross your arms, put your hands behind your back and wriggle like you were pashing Danny at Rydell High.