Critic Robert Christgau, reporting a comment from a woman friend on Olivia Newton-John: “A geisha,” she scoffed. “She makes her voice smaller than it really is just to please men.”
Sometimes pop culture amazes me. Why would anyone make a film of “Dukes of Hazzard”? Or a shot-by-shot remake of “Psycho”? And why, in the name of infinity, would any sane person prefer to listen to Anne Murray’s version of “I Fall to Pieces” over Patsy Cline’s, when Patsy Cline’s version is readily available? Have people lost their minds? What exactly does anybody get out of “For the Good Times”, when rendered by Murray’s flat, implacably bland voice. For God’s sake, people, haven’t you ever heard of Emmy Lou Harris or Lucinda Williams?
Anne Murray, by the way, was a full-time physical education teacher before “Snowbird” rocketed her to fame, as they say. In a CBC special back in the early 70’s, I remember a segment in which she led her band in some calisthenics. She was wearing a short tennis-style skirt. At one point, with the camera behind her, she glanced over her shoulder and flipped up the back of her skirt and gave the viewer a mischievous little wiggle of her ass.
She has not done the musical equivalent in 30 years. Anne Murray, that sweet, vivacious, authentic, Nova Scotia girl, has become a musical product, tasteful and poised, and bland..