Olivia Newton John – Ring Of Fire
For several generations of men, Olivia Newton John has been defined almost exclusively by her bottom.
Wait – that’s not totally fair: her peachy bottom and luxurious thighs, as exquisitely framed by those delicious spray-on black trousers at the end of Grease.
Being remembered purely for your buttocks must play havoc with your self-worth. “I’m not just the owner of ridiculously pert glutes, you know – I’m an artist, yeah?”
Imagine the pain: you’ve worked for years on your technique – singing, dancing, acting, Alexander Technique – and all half the world’s population are interested in are all those tens of thousands of squats and lunges you’ve done.
So what better way to wrench back all that male attention than to cover the most famous song by that most masculine of men, Johnny Cash?
In hindsight (oh yes!) there were many better ways: ones that would have produced better-sounding results, too. Gargling nuts and bolts, or recording a tight-throat yodelling version of Lou Reed‘s Metal Machine Music, for example.
You might be fooled into thinking that this cover is merely a jaw-slackeningly insipid countrified mawk-a-thon, but then you’d have fallen into Newton John’s cunning trap.
Because she hates Ring Of Fire, irrevocably and unwaveringly. She hates all it stands for – men – but loves all that it represents – a man’s failure. All that pent-up anger from all that misplaced buttock-attention is unleashed in a daring attempt to wholly ruin one of the all-time great Man Songs.
That she failed is only because she soared to close too the evil, black sun in her heart and made a song that was so bad it simply couldn’t ruin the original. And so her selling point veered from below the hip to simply unhip.
She and her career never recovered. She now lives in a remote castle in a huge German forest, sticking pins into the pristine backside of a voodoo-doll in her own image. Sad, butt true.
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Are you kidding me? I LOVE Olivia Newton-John’s cover of Ring of Fire! Goes to show that one man’s meat is indeed another’s poison. Thanks for the chance to catch this great cover again!
“One man’s meat”. Fnarrr.
No accounting for some peoples’ complete and utter lack of taste.
Um. Ring of Fire was written by June Carter…Who wasn’t a man, last time I checked.
It was written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore (man) for Johnny Cash. Carter and Cash would later marry, but they were stepping out on other spouses to be together at the time the song was recorded. Cash sang that song with conviction, and it wasn’t a lie.
Did you know there’s actually a great cover of Ring of Fire, made by…….. Grace Jones?
Not able to find it on YouTube though….