Yesterday the word spread officially that singer, actor, and activist Olivia Newton-John has died. With a performing and philanthropic career that spanned five decades ONJ left an indelible mark on popular culture by far not the least of which was her role as Sandy in the feature film production of the musical Grease.

I cannot remember the first album I purchased back in the 70s, but it was almost certainly either Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits or Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits. As a fan of easy listening, great vocals, and romantic songs, her music has been with me since adolescence. It was not easy being a teenage male in the 1970s and preferring love songs and pop when the rest of the world seemed consumed with rock and hair the coming of the hair bands.

Those who know me know that my favorite film was one in which she starred, Xanadu. Now, Xanadu is in fact a terrible movie. Starting production to participate in the brief roller-disco craze of the late 70s it suffered constant and extensive rewrites throughout filming and lacking in strong central narrative or character growth the film bombed at the box office while igniting

Universal Pictures

the musical charts with its soundtrack of Electric Light Orchestra and ONJ songs. The feature found additional life as a cult movie and eventually an Ironic stage musical. Underneath the trashed production, inconsistent plot, and truly ineffable ending the film touched hearts due to it sincere adoration of dreams and dreamers wrapped up in its theme that ‘Dreams don’t die. Not by themselves, we kill them.’ Like Tinkerbell, the dream survives as long as you believe. Olivia has passed, her dream and ours remain.