| Released: July, 1980 (MCA) Produced by: Jeff Lynne, John Farrar Peak on the US Billboard 200: 4 |
| Side One | Side Two |
|---|---|
| Magic Suddenly Dancin' Suspended In Time Whenever You're Away from Me |
I'm Alive The Fall Don't Walk Away All Over the World Xanadu |
| Charted singles: | Hot 100 | AC |
| I'm Alive | 16 | |
| Magic | 1 | 1 |
| Xanadu | 8 | 2 |
| All Over The World | 13 | |
| Suddenly | 20 | 4 |
Ah, Olympian muses, roller skating discos, Gene Kelly, a Don Bluth animation sequence, and LA's Pan-Pacific Auditorium. Such is the magic of Xanadu, one of life's true cheesy pleasures. The movie, which is fun to revisit every few years, received a fantastic succinct movie review from Esquire magazine: a single sentence that read... "In a word, Xana-don't"!
While, admittedly, this roller disco movie was bad, the soundtrack brings back good memories for those of us that were ELO fans around that time. The LP had an ONJ side and an ELO side, but there are plenty of guest appearances as well. While I remember all the songs and sing along with all of them, some of them aren't very good. They probably weren't good when they were released, but what did I know then? Now, looking at the album as a whole, there are about 5 decent songs out of 10.
- Magic - ONJ: A great summer song. All of ONJ's songs were written by her longtime collaborator John Farrar. This is one of his better songs. The third biggest single of 1980.
- Suddenly - ONJ with Cliff Richard: Great ballad. I can sing both the melody and harmony parts if you need that sort of thing.
- Dancin' - ONJ with The Tubes: We really don't need a big band song that segues then meshes with a rock song. In 1980, I was still a year or two away of knowing who The Tubes were.
- Suspended in Time - ONJ: A fairly bland ballad along the lines of Hopelessly Devoted To You from Grease. This song brought the pacing of the movie to a screeching halt (as if that movie needed any help with that).
- Whenever You're Away From Me - ONJ with Gene Kelly: Poor Gene Kelly. This was to be his last movie. A better dancer than singer, he doesn't do too bad a job here with bad material.
- I'm Alive - ELO: Solid ELO effort. The first song heard in the movie when the muses in the mural come alive. I'm told that included in the song's closing coda is Morse code which spells out ELO, but I don't know Morse code so I can't confirm that.
- The Fall - ELO: Typical ELO filler track. Not much here to like or hate.
- Don't Walk Away - ELO: A horrible, plodding song made worse by the memory that this is the background music for the awful animation sequence in the movie.
- All Over The World - ELO: Classic ELO track with disco strings, bad backup vocals, and Jeff Lynne's falsetto.
- Xanadu - ELO & ONJ: While the song is good, you have to listen to it in the context of the movie's finale. Gene Kelly on rollerskates!
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Mark, I L-O-V-E this album! Yes, the film was cheesy on the day it was released, but it was fun so I did not care. Here's my full review: http://mcmaenza.blogspot.com/2011/03/xanadu-soundtrack.html
ReplyDeleteWhile I clearly don't like this album or movie as much as you two do, I enjoy several of the songs immensely. (They are among the only songs my entire family ever agreed upon.) And like, Martin pointed out in his review, there are non-album b-sides to be had.
DeleteWould definitely buy this one again if it were given a Deluxe Edition treatment with b-sides, alternate versions, etc. Were there any remixes or extended versions?
Kinda
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Sorta