Olivia Newton-John – Physical

“Physical” – Single by Olivia Newton-John from the album Physical
B-side: “The Promise (The Dolphin Song)”
Released on 28 September 1981.

The song was produced by John Farrar and written by Steve Kipner and Terry Shaddick, who had originally intended to offer it to Rod Stewart. The song had also been offered to Tina Turner by her manager Roger Davies, but when Turner declined, Davies gave the song to Newton-John, another of his clients.

You know how at the end of the movie Grease Olivia Newton-John transforms from a chaste good girl into a leather-clad vixen? She was definitely in vixen mode for this song, which if you are at all paying attention to the lyrics, is blatantly about sex: “There’s nothin’ left to talk about unless it’s horizontally.”

Olivia’s real-life image was far more modest than what she portrays in this song, and she was concerned about how she would be perceived. Her managers talked her into recording it, as they knew they had a huge hit on their hands.

The song was released about a month after MTV went on the air, so the video got a lot of spins on the new channel. In the clip, Newton-John is shown teasing fat men as they try to exercise in some kind of locker room/gym. The whole idea of the video was to distract from the fact that the song is about sex, and fat guys working out accomplished that goal.

“Physical” was an immediate smash hit, shipping two million copies in the United States, where it was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and spent 10 consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Music video by Olivia Newton-John performing Physical. (C) 1981 Geffen Records