YMMV / Olivia Newton-John

• Covered Up: In Japan, Newton-John's version of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is much better known than the original version by John Denver. The song was also a much bigger commercial success in Japan, reaching No. 6 on the Oricon charts; Denver's version, meanwhile, never charted at all over there.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • At the peak of Newton-John's country-pop success in the mid-1970s, her singles were struggling to chart at all in her home base of the U.K. Of her five consecutive U.S. Top 10 singles from 1973-75, none reached the U.K. Top 10, and only one of them ("I Honestly Love You") even charted there. Not until Grease did she become a consistent hitmaker on both sides of the Atlantic.
  • Newton-John's Cover Version of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" was a respectable hit in the UK, reaching No. 15, but it did much better in Japan, where it hit No. 6 on the Oricon Singles charts and became one of her best-known songs.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Not Gonna Give Into It" from her album "Gaia", especially after her 2022 death. She wrote the song about her struggle with breast cancer in the early '90s, thinking she had beaten the disease. Unfortunately, that turned out to not be the case... Also Harsher in Hindsight.
  • "Window in the Wall", her last-ever song, a duet with her daughter Chloe. It's a lament on the horrible societal divisions in the English-speaking world resulting from Donald Trump, Brexit, and the COVID-19 Pandemic, but with hope that people would eventually be able to reconcile and respect one another again. Sadly, Olivia would not live to see such a "window" open.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: "Silvery Rain" from the "Physical" album (from Olivia's "sexy period") starts out like a light, poppy tune... until you listen to the lyrics, and realize the titular "silvery rain" is pesticide.

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