Grease: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1978)

The 1978 movie version of Grease, the immensely popular Broadway musical about high school students in the 1950s, was much more entertaining than the soundtrack album that accompanied it.  There was a simple reason for this; in the movie (which pop impresario Robert Stigwood co-produced), the songs are separated by action and dialogue, while the soundtrack album gives you the songs all at once, with no context and in the wrong order.  Imagine watching a musical with all the scenes serving the plot taken out.  In other words, imagine watching the Sgt. Pepper movie (also brought to you by Robert Stigwood).  But that's what listening to the Grease movie soundtrack is like.  Grease is a good movie, but, left on its own, the soundtrack is not so stellar; most of the songs simply aren't that great. The irony is that, given the new songs and the fifties rock and roll covers added to the movie, which hadn't been in the original 1972 Broadway production, the original show tunes by Grease creators Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey are the weakest of the lot.

The movie centers around leads John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, whose characters, greaser Danny and good girl Sandy, try to maintain a teenage romance while trying to fit in at high school.  No one imagined that John Travolta could plausibly sing before this movie's release (because of, not in spite of, two pop albums he'd already put out) - or that Olivia Newton-John, never a critic's favorite as a singer, could plausibly act . . . but they both fare better than expected.  Newton-John's clear voice complements the role of Sandy perfectly, and Travolta's voice exudes fifties coolness, so it's a good thing they have the best numbers - which are not Jacobs-Casey tunes.  (Four new songs were added to the movie, no doubt to qualify for the Best Song Oscar; songs from the original Broadway musical were not eligible.) Newton-John's best moments are with songs contributed to the movie by her producer John Farrar, who, it must be pointed out, knew how to write for her.  It thus follows that Farrar's energetic, carefree "You're the One That I Want," performed by Newton-John as a duet with Travolta but with Livvy in complete control, is their best song together; it appears in the movie after Sandy has transformed herself into a greaser girl, and the song finds Sandy issuing pointed orders for Danny to shape up and prove that her faith in him is not wasted.  Travolta, for his part, holds his own in a song where he gets less than half of the lead vocals.

Alas, the surprises end there.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Jacobs and Casey were not another Kander and Ebb; their tunes are humdrum at best, witless at worst.  Few if any of them (certainly not "We Go Together") deserve to be performed as stand-alone songs, as other show tunes are. The racing tune "Greased Lightnin'" proceeds with a breakneck tempo and pulsating energy, but its obscene language and its dirty images of female arousal undercut it.  "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee," in which Sandy's nominal friends mock her, sounds like the Mike Sammes Singers on speed.  When you listen to their songs one after the other on disc, Jacobs and Casey don't sound so impressive.  But while most of this is palatable on screen, nothing can redeem "Beauty School Dropout," performed here by Frankie Avalon; with lyrics stating that no beauty salon customer "would come to you unless she was a hooker," Avalon isn't the problem.

Fortunately, there's Stockard Channing, who as Betty Rizzo outshines everyone, including Travolta and Newton-John, with her acting and singing.  (She can't save "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee," but she tries.)  Channing is a tremendously versatile and talented performer, and she can make a memorable impression with almost any material - even a Jacobs-Casey tune like her featured number here, "There Are Worse Things I Could Do."  Besides, there are worse songs she could sing.  Some of them are on this album.

The rest of the Grease movie soundtrack is a hodgepodge of rock and roll standards and a couple of instrumentals.  Casting director Joel Thurm must have thought it would be a cool idea to get fifties-tribute group Sha Na Na to perform "Hound Dog" and "Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay"  (and "Born To Hand Jive," a Jacobs-Casey original that's nothing but affected excitement) as the band in the movie's school dance scene, though the joke was clearly lost on him.  Maybe Thurm should have listened more carefully - Sha Na Na also throws in "Blue Moon," written by real Broadway composers Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, though as a traditional ballad rather than with the doo-wop arrangement of the Marcels.

The Grease soundtrack album opens with the venerable Frankie Valli performing the title song, written by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, and closes with a reprise of the same.  Gibb's song is a miniature masterpiece; the lyrics sum up both the spirit and the meaning of the movie and the period it portrays.  The conventionality of yesterday really did end with the advent of rock and roll in the fifties.  Except for "You're the One That I Want," though, you don't really need to listen to anything else on the Grease soundtrack in isolation to get that. Bottom line: Just see the movie.