Grease The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture – Various Artists – 1978

First listen?: To the full soundtrack, Yes. Of course I’ve seen Grease A LOT.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first, I’m not a huge fan of Grease. There isn’t much of a story, the songs are inconsistent at best and Danny is just so unlikable. I realise I’m in the minority here, but there are just much better musical films. Yes there’s a song like Hopelessly Devoted To You, a song that pretty much made it certain that Olivia Newton John would go on to become one of the world’s biggest artists but then there’s the terrible Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee. Grease has mass appeal thanks to it’s scattershot approach to the ‘1950s style’ it attempts to emulate. In fact there’s the disco of the title track, doo-wop of Beauty School Dropout and the classic rock n roll of Born To Hand Jive. As a Soundtrack it ends up being a bookend of main character songs like Sandy and There Are Worse Things I Could Do and a middle section of ‘background’ tracks performed by Sha-Na-Na such as Blue Moon and Hound Dog. It makes for a strange listen give that it’s not quite in the order of the film and it takes ages to get back to any of the ‘hits’ again. Speaking of hits, the only reason to watch Grease, by far the best track on here and the best moment of the film has to be You’re The One That I Want. Travolta and Newton-John’s performances are just so infectious, the perfectly constructed number in the film coming to mind whenever I hear the song. It’s the saving grace for me here and unlike seemingly the rest of the population I’m just not that keen on Grease. I was very surprised to see it not feature in the top 40 especially given the fact that You’re The One That I Want is the 6th biggest selling song of all time here in the UK, but it lands just outside instead.

Rating: 3/10

Will I listen again?: No, but I’ll probably sit through Grease again.

Best Track: You’re The One That I Want is the only one I want. ‘Ooh ooh ooh’.