Songoftheday 8/16/12 - My mouth is dry, my legs are weak, I'm thinkin' this cause I can't speak..

Olivia Newton-John - "Heart Attack"
from the album Olivia's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (four weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day is by the singer and actress Olivia Newton-John. Olivia, a British-born immigrant to Australia, returned to her birth country to start her career, and released her first album in 1971. The title track, the Bob Dylan-penned "If Not For You", became her first US top-40 single, and even topped the Adult Contemporary (soft-rock) chart, as well as a top-10 single in England.

In the early Seventies, Olivia's music had a country slant, and she scored three #1 country albums, and at the same time triumphed on pop radio. In 1973, her down-home track "Let Me Be There", from the LP of the same name, was her first US top-ten pop hit. That was followed the next year by the ballad "I Honestly Love You", which ended up her first #1 pop single in America. A second #1, "Have You Never Been Mellow", followed in 1975. Her mainstream popularity even split the country music business establishment, causing the formation of the "American Country Entertainers" as a protest to her winning the Country Music Association Female Vocalist Of The Year.

As the decade started to come to a close, Olivia's image changed dramatically from a sweet and innocent country girl to a fun, sensual woman. She starred in the huge film version of the musical Grease in 1978, and topped the US pop chart again with "You're The One That I Want" with costar John Travolta. Two years after that, she starred in the roller-disco camp classic Xanadu, and started the 80s with another #1 in "Magic".

By then her transformation into a sultry vixen was complete, and her 1981 album Physical came through with her biggest hit ever, the title track, which topped the US Hot 100 for a then-record ten weeks. The followup single, "Make A Move On Me", also made the top-5 in the spring of 1982.

At the end of that same year, Olivia released her second greatest hits collection, which contained eight of her biggest hits from Grease up to that time, along with two new songs, one of which was "Heart Attack", which was co-written by Steve Kipner who also co-wrote "Physical"...

The song spent about a month at #3, and did even one rung higher in Canada, but surprisingly missed the British top-40 altogether at #46.

Up Tomorrow: The "Jewish Elvis" gets inspired by an alien.