Xanadu – music by Olivia Newton-John & ELO
At the time of this review, Xanadu doesn’t seem to have been pressed on CD in the States, at least not recently, so I had to get a Japanese import, but at least the Japanese realized where the true value of this movie’s music was and put the ELO tracks first! (Oh, all right, just to be fair, I really, really like Olivia Newton-John’s “Magic”, and the big-band/rock combo “Dancin'” featuring The Tubes is really nifty. There, I admitted it.) Among the ELO tracks, the only weak entry is “Xanadu” itself, but even so
it’s not a bad song. It may not be the lost holy grail that ELO fans would really like to hear – Jeff Lynne’s abandoned instrumental score for the movie itself – but in general, the music was better than the movie.
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- I’m Alive (3:47)
- The Fall (3:36)
- Don’t Walk Away (4:47)
- All Over The World (4:05)
- Xanadu (with Olivia Newton-John) (3:28)
Olivia Newton-John tracks:- Magic (4:28)
- Suddenly – with Cliff Richard (4:00)
- Dancin’ – with the Tubes (5:15)
- Suspended in Time (3:53)
- Whenever You’re Away From Me / with Gene Kelly (4:18)
Released by: MCA
Release date: 1980
Total running time: 41:37
Let’s get one thing straight, okay? There’s no such thing as a typical Peter Gabriel album. You can barely even compare one Gabriel album to another, as the style and emphasis shifts with each one of them. Hell, it’s even hard to put titles to them because the first three – technically, even the fourth (usually known as Security) as well – are simply titled Peter Gabriel. This is the album with the strange picture of Peter’s face melting. (Well, I’ll even grant you that most of his album covers are strange pictures of one sort or another…this is really getting us nowhere, isn’t it? Let’s talk about music, shall we?) Several of these tracks rank among my favorites, including the somewhat 
is an example of just how amazing a well-planned and constructed concept album can sound. From this album also comes the singles “Games People Play” and “Time”, though I’ve always felt they pale in comparison to the cycle of songs that surround the title track toward the end of the album.
This album may be a little more mainstream to some, as it sports such relative hits as “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” and the catchy “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da”, but the non-singles are more examples of the genius of the group in their earlier days. “Man In A Suitcase” is one of my all-time favorite Police tunes for some reason I’ve never quite been able to put a finger on. I have to rate Regatta de Blanc higher than this album, but because of the more familiar material, it may be a more ideal 
This is the album which brought Split Enz their greatest hit in America, and as such seems to be the point of origin for many fans’ interest in the band, thus it becomes a default classic. But honestly, even in the 80s the band came up with better material than this. The Neil Finn hit “I Got You” and its very similar cousin “What’s The Matter With You” are memorable, as well as Tim’s classics “I Hope I Never” and “Poor Boy”, both of which were given orchestral treatment on the later ENZSO album. My 
personal favorite is the extremely silly “Nobody Takes Me Seriously”, an infrequently-remembered Tim tune. But much of the rest of the album, including a couple of bland instrumentals, is rather forgettable.