Back to Basics |  | Artist: Olivia Newton-john
Label: Geffen
Category: Music
Buy Used: $5.00
Rating:  33 reviews
Media: Audio Cassette
UPC: 020642447049
EAN: 0020642447049
ASIN: B00000BOA3
Release Date: June 9, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Deeper Than a River - Olivia Newton-John, Warren, Diane | | • | Not Gonna Be the One - Olivia Newton-John, Swirsky, Seth | | • | I Want to Be Wanted - Olivia Newton-John, Spotti, Giuseppe | | • | I Need Love - Olivia Newton-John, Kipner, Steve | | • | Twist of Fate - Olivia Newton-John, Kipner, Steve | | • | Physical - Olivia Newton-John, Kipner, Steve | | • | Magic - Olivia Newton-John, Farrar, John | | • | Deeper Than the Night - Olivia Newton-John, Snow, Tom | | • | A Little More Love - Olivia Newton-John, Farrar, John | | • | You're the One That I Want - Olivia Newton-John, Farrar, John | | • | Summer Nights - Olivia Newton-John, Jacobs, Jim | | • | Hopelessly Devoted to You - Olivia Newton-John, Farrar, John | | • | Please Mr. Please - Olivia Newton-John, Welch, Bruce | | • | Sam - Olivia Newton-John, Farrar, John | | • | Have You Never Been Mellow - Olivia Newton-John, Farrar, John | | • | If You Love Me (Let Me Know) - Olivia Newton-John, Rostill, John | | • | I Honestly Love You - Olivia Newton-John, Allen, Peter |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
She started her career as an inoffensive pop singer who sang of the benefits of getting "mellow" ("Have You Never Been Mellow"). Her transformation into a brazen aerobics sex-throb with "Physical" is as radical as what happens to her character, Sandra Dee, in the movie Grease. Three cuts from which ("Hopelessly Devoted to You," "You're the One That I Want," and "Summer Nights") are featured here. Add a few other hits, "A Little More Love" and "Magic" and you've got a full spectrum view of what she can do. From syrupy ballad queen to workout addict, she got it on the radio. --Rob O'Connor
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| Customer Reviews:
 Olivia and life February 7, 2008
Roberta Hotard (New Tampa, Florida)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
I have always loved Olivia Newton John as a singer and actress. A little more love touched my heart and I honestly love you , I still listen to the song everyday. When I first heard I honestly love you , I contacted the radio station to dedicate it the person I loved and always will. Love does not go away. Thanks Olivia!
Great One Disc Compilation of ONJ's work and Surprisingly Great Sound! December 20, 2005
Frederick Baptist (Singapore)
I have to say that for an unremastered album, the sound quality of this cd is remarkably good! I can only imagine how much better this would be if they would remaster it and make this a 20 track collection as I agree with most of the other reviewers here that some truly essential tracks are missing. That, I suppose, is inevitable given the volume of ONJ's work and the ability to only put so many tracks on one disc. Which is why I'm more forgiving of this version of her best of tracks and I'm going to say that the tracks here are a very good selection by themselves and there are 4 new tracks as well. ONJ has been very lucky in that she has had great songwriters write for here like John Farrar and great producers as well like David Foster enhancing her sound. There really isn't a weak track here and my favourites that are real gems of songwriting and performance are "Magic" (the great guitar harmonics still gives me goosebumps everytime), "A Little More Love" (one of the best bass lines ever composed) "Sam" (a great love song and written by one of the original members of the Shadows!)"Have You Never Been Mellow" and "I Honestly Love You" This is a very good ONJ compilation and for the price, 17 great track selections and surprisingly good sound quality a great bargain indeed. Highly recommended.
 Olivia Newton-John; Back To Basics 1971-1992 June 1, 2005
My Opinion (U S)
Olivia Newton-John compilations have been in this household since the 70s and all I can say is she has always had songs that I enjoy listening to. To this day I still own her O.N.J. Greatest Hits MCA Records Inc. LP from 1976. Part of the tunes from that album are on this CD but not all. In other words the biggest problem I have with this 1992 Back To Basics disc is there's to many of her hits left off. Let Me Be There, Come On Over, Don't Stop Believin, and, Xanadu, are just four that are not here however there are several on this CD that most of you will recognize like, Physical, I Honestly Love You, Sam, If You Love Me (Let Me Know), and the sexy tunes, A Little More Love, and, Magic, plus it also has three songs from the highly popular motion picture, Grease, and they are, Summer Nights, You're The One That I Want, and, Hopelessly Devoted To You. There is also a nice catchy little tune on here that deserves honorable mention and is also pleasant to listen to being, Deeper Than A River, so I have to say that this is a decent seventeen track single disc that still packs a punch.
Of all the great songs Olivia has gave us over the years I still gotta say that my two favorites are songs with a country flavor from her earliest days and they are 1973s, Let Me Be There, and 1974s, If You Love Me (Let Me Know), and like I stated above, Let Me Be There, is not on this disc so I still have to listen to my ole O.N.J. Greatest Hits LP to hear that one. For years; when I would listen to one I would also listen to the other because they are back to back on the ole LP.
For Olivia I give five stars however due to some of Olivia's hits being missing I can only give this compilation three stars which rounds out to four. I can handle a few of her hits not being on this disc and you probably can to However; Am I aggravated at myself for purchasing this CD without one of my two favorite tunes by Olivia on it? Yep! and I can't get any more basic than that.
 Probably only worth getting for the new songs April 9, 2005
L.A. Scene (Indian Trail, NC USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
When looking at Olivia Newton-John's career, one must look at it from the perspective of her as a vocalist. You aren't going to find a lot of songs where Olivia is going to be the songwriter - and you aren't going to find her playing a lot of instruments. Olivia does what she does best - provide some outstanding vocals. Therefore, Olivia is going to have a strong reliance on good songwriting and good supporting musicians. What a lot of people probably don't remember is that when Olivia started out as a vocalist in the 1970s, she came up through the Country and Folk Music ranks. Olivia's crossover into a mainstream/pop artist would coincide with her film debut in the movie-version of "Grease". That film would establish her as a Superstar. However as fast as Olivia's Star rose, she would fall into oblivion by the end of the 1980s. However, Olivia's successful career has resulted in some nice collections of her vocal work. One such collection is "Olivia Newton-John: Back to Basics - The Essential Collection 1971-1992". It serves as a reverse chronology of Olivia's work starting with 1992 and going back to her early days as a Country artist.
There are two things that set "Back to Basics" apart from many of the other Olivia Newton-John compilations that are available today. For starters, it contains four new recordings that are unavailable on any of the other greatest hits sets. The other thing is that this compilation goes in reverse chronological order. Normally I prefer my Greatest Hits collections to have the tracks arranged in chronological order. This allows me to see how the artist has progressed and evolved over time. "Back to Basics" does the reverse. While I still would have liked to have seen this in regular chronological order, I found the reverse order to be an interesting twist. It fits very nicely with the title "Back to Basics".
"Back to Basics" isn't the most complete collection out there. While it does contain some nice songs, there are some very good Olivia songs that are missing. The songs I would have liked to have seen included are: "Don't Stop Believin", "Let it Shine", "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother", "Come on Over", "Take Me Home Country Roads", "Me and Bobby McGee", "Don't Cry for me Argentina", "Heart Attack", and "Make a Move on Me"
As mentioned, there are several other Compilations out there. The following lists some of the more popular compilations. Here are some important notes when looking at these compilations:
"Greatest Hits": This collection contains 12 songs covering all of the albums before "Grease". The songs on "Back to Basics" that precede the "Grease" songs are all included on this collection"
"Greatest Hits 2": This collection contains 10 songs from "Grease" to "Physical". While "Back to Basics" contains 7 songs from this period, "Greatest Hits 2" doesn't contain "Deeper Than the Night" or the duets with John Travolta - "You're the One that I Want" and "Summer Nights".
"Magic - The Best of Olivia Newton-John": This is a 21-song set that covers Olivia's career through 1983's "Twist of Fate" (the point where Olivia's career went into decline). All of the songs on "Back to Basics" (with the exception of the four new tracks) are contained on this collection. In addition, this collection contains the "Grease Mega Mix" that gained popularity a few years ago.
"The Best of Olivia Newton-John": This is a 18-song collection that goes deeper with Olivia's early work (i.e. early to mid 1970s songs).
As mentioned while this is not the most complete collection, it does contain four new songs by Olivia. I wouldn't do "handstands" for these new Olivia songs, but they aren't bad. Olivia gets some help from some industry "names" for these songs:
"Deeper than a River": This song was written and produced by Diane Warren. You can hear the maturity in Olivia's voice on this light pop-ballad song.
"Not Gonna Be the One": This is another light pop-ballad song. It almost has a 1990s Bee Gees feel to it.
"I Want to Be Wanted": This song is kind of a throwback song to Olivia's Country Music days. This song features a Pedal Steel Guitar giving a real nice country feel to the song. Robbie Buchanan, a well-known studio musician keyboardist is on this track as well.
"I Need Love": While not a total "Dance Song", this song has a definite R&B/Dance feel to it. To some extent - there even is a bit of Funk to it. Much of this is due to the fact that Giorgio Moroder is the producer of this song. Surprisingly, I found this to be the strongest of the four tracks. Olivia pulls this off well.
I was glad this song contained "Twist of Fate". While this song did mark the beginning of Olivia's decline, it is a Synth-Pop song and showed how Olivia came full-circle from her Country/Folk days of the early 1970s.
The liner notes are in the fold out fashion. One side opens up with a big picture of a 40something year old Olivia. The other side contains pictures of the albums from which each of the songs came from. Each of the song contains some brief credits. The four new songs contain the songwriting and production credits. While I did like the reverse chronology that is done on this collection, I felt "Back to Basics" was incomplete compared to what I could get on the "Magic" collection - in spite of the fact that this collection contains four new songs. Overall, if you are looking to get started with an Olivia Newton-John compilation, I'd recommend going with the "Magic" collection. I'd look at the other three collections if you are looking to go deeper with some of Olivia's greatest hits. I'd only look at this collection if you want to check out the new songs - or if you can get it a value price.
I honestly love her...Really. Great Olivia collection March 21, 2004
Daniel J. Hamlow (Utsunomiya City, Japan)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Despite starting with folk and country roots, Olivia Newton-John came to the forefront with her relocation to North America and retooled herself to more pop standards, despite winning a Grammy for Best Country Female Vocal for "Let Me Be There." No, there was one more Grammy to be won, and that was Record of the Year (1974) for the tearful heartfelt piano and strings "I Honestly Love You," definitely the best song here.That was from the If You Love Me, Let Me Know album, and the country title track is also included. The basso male backing vocalist provide a good balance with Olivia's winsome pop vocals. As for the rest, it's the requisite collection of hits, of which there are plenty, as well as four new songs. The first one was penned and co-produced by Diane Warren, showing she has something in her magic pen for O N-J. "Deeper Than A River" belongs squarely in the 80's tradition of dreamy pop ballads, complete with synthesizers and strings. "Not Gonna Be The One" could easily belong on one her Totally Hot album, as there are similarities to this and "A Little More Love." Produced by her longtime producer John Farrar. Her cover of Brenda Lee's #1 hit, "I Want To Be Wanted,"--who doesn't want to be?--is my favourite of the four new songs here, showing her ability to put forth great ballads haven't diminished with her Grammy winner. And with Peter Asher (Peter of Peter and Gordon) as producer, how can she go wrong? "I Need Love" is 80's soul/pop and synth fills set to a funky bass backbeat, with some monologue thrown in. In an ironic reference to an earlier hit, she sings that she holding out for something more than physical. Clearly it's something more permanent: "I'm not looking for a bandaid on loneliness." Aren't we all? And this is the most un-Moroder sounding Giorgio Moroder production I've heard. In a twist of fate, many of her best-known songs turned out to be soundtrack hits. And because of that, N-J gets tarred with the epithet 70's cheese when many are asked to classify her. Two of them were from Grease, both duets with John Travolta. The bouncy "You're The One That I Want," penultimate number in the movie with the catchy bass setting the rhythm of the song, and a big hit in the US, spent nine weeks at the top in England. "Summer Nights," a song placed clearly in the musical genre, also went to #1 in the UK. The other #1, "Xanadu," is not on there, but "Magic" also from that movie, is. Of the other movie tracks, the fast-paced pop of "Twist Of Fate," from Two Of A Kind, her second teaming up with Travolta, with its racing electropop bass synth and fuzzy guitar, definitely shows her staying power in 1983, and as far as this collection went, as material from Soul Kiss and The Rumour are excluded. The other, from Grease, is her soaring strings and steel guitar ballad, "Hopelessly Devoted To You," showing a mixture of pop and country instruments. In the US, one of her last gasps at greatness was the smart and punchy title track to her "Physical" album, but singles like thatand lines like "let's get physical/let me hear your body talk" showed her embracing the naughty Sandy side of her. Small wonder the album cover, showing her flushed from an exercise workout, was mistaken for...well, physical things. From Don't Stop Believin' (1976) comes the melting strings ballad "Sam." And from the previous year, "Have You Never Been Mellow?" taken from the album of the same name, was a leisure mid-paced number with strings, and showed Olivia adding her two cents to the feminist bandwagon: "someone else be strong" or "comfort from inside," reflecting the inner spotlight people began turning on in the 70's. Another song from that album is the country tune "Please Mr. Please," a pleading request to someone not to play a certain song for fear of being reminded of a past love. Despite the subtitle 1971-1992, the earliest songs here date from 1974's If You Love Me, Let Me Know. For a first-time listen at Olivia, much recommended, and if you love her stuff, let me know. If not, let her be.
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