Xanadu [Original Broadway Cast Recording]

1	I'm Alive 4:03
2	Magic 3:03
3	Evil Woman 2:40
4	Suddenly 3:38
5	Whenever You're Away from Me 3:59
6	Dancin' 2:28
7	Strange Magic 2:01
8	All Over the World 3:17
9	Don't Walk Away 3:38
10	Fool 1:27
11	The Fall 2:02
12	Suspended in Time 2:56
13	Have You Never Been Mellow 3:24
14	Xanadu 4:23

Barnes & Noble

Turning a notorious film flop into Broadway fun, Xanadu defies the skeptics and reinvents the 1980s Olivia Newton-John movie as a deliciously campy stage show. Roller-skating beauty Kira convinces down-on-his-luck artist Sonny to build Venice Beach's first roller disco. Romance and song ensue, with the revamped film music by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar delivered via a stellar Broadway cast.

All Music Guide

Xanadu, the poorly received 1980 movie musical that was a remake of the 1947 movie musical Down to Earth (itself part of a long tradition of goddess-meets-modern-mortals stories that includes such Broadway musicals-turned-movies as I Married an Angel and One Touch of Venus), remains memorable for only one thing: its soundtrack. The album that accompanied the film sold two million copies and spawned five Top 40 hits for hapless star Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra. (The songwriting was split between Newton-John's personal composer John Farrar and ELO's Jeff Lynne.) Bad as the movie may have been, the music probably was what made it seem a bankable prospect for stage adaptation, especially considering that among the four songs interpolated into the score are three more old ELO and Newton-John hits, "Evil Woman," "Strange Magic," and "Have You Never Been Mellow." The producers of the show seem to have been aiming at the approach that made Mamma Mia! a hit, that sort of guilty pleasure aspect of people's helpless enjoyment of the pop music of their adolescence, mixed with a bit of the send-up quality of, say, The Rocky Horror Show. William Ruhlmann