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Olivia Newton-John - Xanadu

Olivia Newton-John - Xanadu Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Xanadu Soundtrack
Released: 1980

Xanadu Lyrics

A place where nobody dared to go
The love that we came to know
They call it Xanadu
And now, open your eyes and see
What we have made is real
We are in Xanadu

A million lights are dancing
And there you are, a shooting star
An everlasting world
And you're here with me, eternally
Xanadu, Xanadu
(Now we are here) in Xanadu
Xanadu, Xanadu
(Now we are here) in Xanadu
Xanadu, your neon lights
Will shine for you, Xanadu

The love that echoes of long ago
You needed the world to know
They are in Xanadu
The dream that came
Through a million years
That lived through all the tears
It came to Xanadu

A million lights are dancing
And there you are, a shooting star
An everlasting world
And you're here with me, eternally
Xanadu, Xanadu
(Now we are here) in Xanadu
Xanadu, Xanadu
(Now we are here) in Xanadu

Now that I'm here
Now that you're near, in Xanadu
Now that I'm here
Now that you're near, in Xanadu
Xanadu

Writer/s: LYNNE, JEFF
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Xanadu Song Chart

The word Xanadu showed up in the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Xanadu is the fictional name of the land where Khubla Khan ordered the dome to be built. The word Xanadu came to mean a paradise. In the movie Citizen Kane, Xanadu was the name of Charles Foster Kane's house.

This was written for the movie musical of the same name. Newton-John starred in the film with Gene Kelly. The movie was a bomb, but the soundtrack, which contained all songs by Newton-John and The Electric Light Orchestra, was a hit.

In the trailer for the film, Olivia-Newton John is billed as "the girl you loved in Grease." This song plays over the end of the trailer. Quite a bit is made of the singing and dancing and starring cast, not much is mentioned about the plot.

Newton-John recorded this with The Electric Light Orchestra. Although the song is noted for being performed with Olivia Newton John for the movie Xanadu, The Electric Light Orchestra had in fact performed the song with Jeff Lynne taking over the lyrics in a more mellow sounding vocal to Olivia's operatic sounding voice. (thanks, Logan - Troy, MT)

For those of you who have heard of this film's reputation but not yet seen it, you might be asking yourself, "What on earth is so terrible about it?" It's famous for being a box-office flop, but what, did it stink all over? And you might even go hunting down reviews online, only to find a queue of user reviews on IMDB defending it for dear life and crying that it's not that bad.

Here's the gist of it:

The concept, story, and overall dialog is pathetic, even though everything else is great.

They blew $20 million cool ones on the budget for this in 1980! Consider that Star Wars, released just three years previously, had a budget of $11 million. And there's no way Xanadu would have outsold The Force, even with dialogue by Shakespeare.

It's basically a roller-disco fantasy made at a time when (a) disco, (b) roller-skating, and (c) fantasy all became as dead as fried chicken. It was the dawn of the '80s; Reagan was in office and people wanted either hard sci-fi or down-home country folk, and it was time for heavy metal and greed.

The studio executives made bone-headed decisions slapping this together, like with the animated sequence in the middle which just confused the bejabbers out of everybody. It was basically just thrown in for the sole purpose of Universal thumbing their nose at Disney.

Key words from above point: "slapped together." Including one each of every kind of music genre. The whole thing plays like it was built by sugar-hyped six-year-olds who couldn't resist gluing on "one more cool thing," whether it fit or not.

Nevertheless, it is a guilty pleasure, Olivia sings her sweet little heart out, Gene dances up a storm, ELO rocks out, and it's all now an interesting historical period piece with a modern-day cult following.