Country Roads and Summer Nights Edition Part 2

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History,

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

These days, country and pop acts regularly invade each other’s territory. But in Nashville during the 1970s, “crossover” was a dirty word. Then came two rising stars who offered up a new hybrid of Americana-style pop.

John Denver infused his folk balladry with homespun lyrics about country roads and wide-open skies. Olivia Newton-John sang over twangy melodies that belied her British-Australian roots. Both faced backlash—especially when they started topping the country and pop charts simultaneously and winning prizes that used to go to Nashville legends.

Eventually, both artists outgrew country music. Denver became a ubiquitous entertainer and beloved Muppet wingman. Newton-John dazzled in the film Grease, then reinvented herself as a leather-clad siren unafraid to get physical.

Join Chris Molanphy as he traces the parallel rise of two country-pop titans from the Rocky Mountains to Xanadu.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick note to my loyal listenership. Your hit parade host is fighting a cold. So please pardon my voice quality in part two of this hit parade episode.
0:33.0	Welcome to the Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from coast to coast.
0:38.9	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series? On our last episode, we compared the parallel 70s careers of John Denver and
0:47.4	Olivia Newton-John, pop singers who stumbled their way into country music, and, for a couple of years, dominated the field.
0:56.5	Their success wasn't without controversy, as they won major country prizes, only to find
1:04.1	Nashville veterans rebelling against them. But by that point, their hits were too big on the pop and country charts to be
1:13.4	stopped. We're now at 1975. John and Olivia are at the cusp of an imperial phase, and about to
1:23.2	collaborate. But the choices they make from here will determine if their stardom remains intact
1:30.6	heading into the 1980s.
1:37.1	In early 75, as John Denver was winding up the singles from his Back Home Again album,
1:46.1	Olivia Newton John dropped her next LP, Have You Never Been Mellow?
1:51.5	It was another near instant smash, topping both the pop and country album charts in under a month.
1:59.4	Have you never been mellowed, have you never tried to find a comfort from inside?
2:12.9	As we discussed in our Imperial Phases episode of Hit Parade, one of the surest signs of a
2:21.3	superstar's imperiality is a hit that would not normally chart as well as it did.
2:28.3	That was the case with Olivia's exceedingly laid-back, Have You Never Been been mellow single? The breezy track not only
2:37.6	topped the Hot 100, on the country singles chart, despite containing very little twang, it made it
2:45.5	all the way up to number three. For the moment, Newton John was commercially bulletproof. A follow-up single,
2:54.1	Please Mr. Please, shot to number three pop, number five country. With lyrics about roadhouse
3:01.6	jukeboxes and cowboys, please Mr. Please, at least resembled country music. Please, Mr. Please, at least resembled country music.
3:08.3	Please, please.
3:10.3	Don't play B-17.
	...

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