Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John sold more than 100 million albums and had ten number one hits, among them “Physical,” which spent 10 weeks at the top of the Billboard chart and was the number one single of the ’80s. She won four Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year for “I Honestly Love You,” and in 1978 she co-starred with John Travolta in Grease. She was named the first Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Environment Programme and performed at the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics before an estimated global audience of four billion people. In December 2019 she was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In Melbourne, the Olivia Newton-John Cancer, Wellness & Research Centre, which she helped raise nearly $200 million to build, provides cancer treatment, education, training, and research.
Newton-John’s life began in Cambridge, England, in 1948, and she moved to Melbourne, Australia, with her family when she was five. By 15 she had formed an all-girl group, Sol 4, and winning a talent contest on the television show Sing, Sing, Sing earned her a trip to London, where she and her Melbourne friend Pat Carroll formed the double act Pat & Olivia. She cut her first single for Decca Records in 1966, a version of Jackie DeShannon’s “Till You Say You’ll Be Mine,” and in 1971 she recorded Bob Dylan’s “If Not For You,” co-produced by Bruce Welch and John Farrar.
Her U.S. album debut, Let Me Be There, produced her first top ten single of the same name and brought her the Academy of Country Music’s Most Promising Female Vocalist award and a Grammy for Best Country Vocalist; it and Have You Never Been Mellow were certified gold. The Grease soundtrack carried her duets with Travolta, “You’re The One That I Want” and “Summer Nights,” as well as “Hopelessly Devoted To You.” Physical achieved double-platinum status in 1984, and its video album won the Grammy for Video of the Year. Grace and Gratitude: Renewed (2010) debuted at number two on Billboard’s New Age chart. In 2015 “You Have to Believe,” her duet with her daughter Chloe, made them the first mother-daughter duo to top Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart.
Newton-John died on August 8, 2022. Her honors include a Golden Globe nomination for Grease, an Emmy Award, and ten American Music Awards, four of them for favorite female artist, pop/rock, a record unmatched in the show’s first 20 years. She was appointed O.B.E. in 1979, inducted into the Australian Music Hall of Fame at the 16th ARIA Awards in 2002, made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2006, given her own stamp in Australia Post’s Legends series in 2013, and appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019. Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Artists chart lists her at 44.
In October 2020 she brought the masters and publishing assets she owned into a partnership with Primary Wave Music Publishing, and that November she and her husband, John Easterling, established the Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund, an independent charity sponsoring global research into plant medicine for cancer. A deluxe CD and DVD edition of Physical followed in October 2021. In April 2023 the RIAA certified “Hopelessly Devoted To You” platinum, and in April 2025 “Gospel According to Olivia: Grace & Gratitude” reimagined one of her songs with a full choir. In August 2025 a Xanadu-inspired collection celebrated 45 years of her musical Xanadu.
