Shoo-bop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom
Rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong
Shoo-bop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom
Chang chang changitty chang sha-bop
Dip da-dip da-dip doo-*** da doo-bee doo
Boogedy boogedy boogedy boogedy
Shoo-be doo-*** she-bop
Sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na yippity dip de doom
*** ba-ba lu-mop and *** bam boom!
5.18 - Grease - OST - (1978 album)
It has been put forth by certain intellectuals that human beings were meant to breed in the late teenage years, when both men and women are at their most fertile. These same intellectuals have pointed out that our educational system, mixed with our holdover of Christian thoughts about virginity and purity, have caused a bit of a powder keg regarding teenage sexuality.
Herein lies Grease, surely as pomade hair, cars, poodle skirts, high school, letter sweaters, leather jackets, and sex could ever be. It’s a camp play: a possibly gay, kitsch way to address ‘50s teen sexuality through the '70s. The leads of the unforgettable Rizzo, Danny Zuko, and Sandra Dee (Dombrowski) are ascendant, unless you're a critic. It’s considered a bad play, a bad musical, a bad movie. It breaks rules. There’s no chorus line, dammit. It loves to rock and dance the lindy hop. Instead of stateliness or the hustle, we get ice cream parlors, diners, drive-ins, and yes, dives.
Oh, it has its themes. Should or shouldn’t Sandy Dombrowski (ahem, do it) with Danny Zuko, who so desperately loves her purity but wants to savage it all at the same time for all that minute of pleasure? Stockard Channing, in a performance for the ages in the form as Rizzo, is there as juxtaposition to this tension, already having gone all the way. She's tough. She's wounded. We think she loves Zuko, but she knows he loves Sandy. Her and Zuko might have dated once. She might be pregnant with a second-hand man's baby.
You know the play; it’s about the album.
The first song (a #1 hit) is disco, penned by the Brothers Gibb, at the height of their popularity. It then segues into the meat of the album, the heart of the play. We are transported from the sexual and political individuation that was the seventies and transported back to the fifties, with the knowing sensibility of having grown up as a country in the meantime. To wit, Danny and Sandy talk about their summer romance at the beach:
“I saved her life, she nearly drowned.”
“He showed off, splashing around.”
And from there we go. The songs. The doo-*** call and response of "Summer Nights," perspectival fools intact. The country twang of "Hopelessly Devoted To You". "You’re The One That I Want." "Beauty School Dropout" by Frankie Avalon. The unforgettable "Look At Me I’m Sandra Dee." (Where the album might lag, Channing makes it kick again. Her voice is not classically trained, it would seem, but is very effective. Who can forget her “Fongool! I’m Sandra Dee?”) More wistful and less effective lies "There Are Worse Things I Could Do," a song that is a bit hokey, but still shows us the vulnerability in Rizzo’s character. The song, when put up against some duds that came immediately before it, saves the track order again.
Aside from inexplicably giving Sha-Na-Na fifteen minutes of album space, the rest of the platter is a winner, telling the story of Danny, Sandy, The Pink Ladies and the T-Birds (or whoever they were). It’s one of the best-selling albums of all-time, and with good reason. The songs are full of seventies production with a ‘50s sensibility. They're hummable. Sing-along-able. They're greased lightning!
Critics never really take the time to address the songs and their enduring popularity. It enjoyed a revival amongst college women in the nineties. It’s enjoying another chart run as of February of this year. Punk rock groups had a period in the nineties when they covered Grease, down to its album cover.
Speaking of which, as always, the cover. The cover itself is a picture of a snapshot Polaroid, with two beautiful people on the high-gloss photo. Like the album itself, it had the benefit of '70s production with the aesthetic sensibility of the '50s. Perfect all around, Danny and Sandy, happily ever after, enshrined in a picture. Photo album art. Brilliant.
Look at me...