Talk:Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

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On the one hand, this website claims that Olivia Newton-John herself, being somewhat uncomfortable with the suggestive nature of the song's lyrics, wanted "a fun video about exercise rather than sex". There probably are books about her career which could serve as references on this point.

On the other, while I do agree that the video and album picture and so on served to give the song an additional identity, this was, and I think obviously, only a secondary measure to offset the suggestive nature of its lyrics.

The primary measure was the fact that Olivia Newton-John herself was a female rather than male performer. That meant that the song's theme - a lover's frustration at having to be slow and indirect, without the relationship proceeding to physical intimacy - was turned from a potentially threatening expression of male sexuality in its expected pattern to a role reversal. The video was simply a second line of defence.

Also, it isn't surprising (as the section of the article in question seems to imply) that the song still met opposition and censorship. Psychological measures to make listeners less uncomfortable with the song on an emotional level do not, in any way, prevent people from still perceiving what the lyrics say. A subtle influence on people's attitudes, as long as they aren't consciously fighting it, can be expected to modify behavior only slightly. Quadibloc (talk) 12:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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I don't know that anybody ever thought that the song contained any obscenities; it was much more of a suggestiveness controversy... AnonMoos (talk) 15:45, 12 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)'s orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "RockontheNet":

• From Physical (album): "Olivia Newton-John award and achievements". Rock on the Net. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
• From Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance: "Grammy Awards: Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female". Rock on the Net. Retrieved 20 July 2011.

Reference named "peoplemagazine":

• From George Michael: Corinthios, Aurelie (26 December 2016). "George Michael Was Found Dead in Bed by His Boyfriend Fadi Fawaz: 'I Will Never Stop Missing You'". People. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
• From Physical (album): "People Picks and Pans Review — Physical". People.com. Retrieved 19 February 2015.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 23:53, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]