I don’t do Grease, ok?
UK number one 17 June — 18 August 1978
This one is doubly difficult. For starters, I wasn’t alive in 1978, when this blazing summer anthem was number one for a big fat nine weeks.
Secondly, I don’t do Grease.
I missed the Grease boat. I may be the only British female of a certain age who totally ducked it.
While my primary school girl peers were shamma-lamma-ramma-da-ding-dee-donging I was playing armies and watching Predator, like a weird little nerd-child.
Come the twentieth anniversary re-release I was dragged to the cinema by disbelieving college friends. “You’re going to LOVE it!”
It was ok. Maybe seventeen is too late to watch Grease for the first time when you’ve already lived through years of people singing that brusha brusha song in the bathroom at sleepovers.
My strongest Grease-related (Greasy?) memory is auditioning for the musical theatre society production at uni. I was a fresher, high on last night’s £1 flavoured vodka shots, convinced because I nearly chose to do a drama degree that I would waltz into a speaking part.
Not so.
The audition began in a hall absolutely heaving with frenzied eighteen-year-olds learning the leg-tangling dance that Danny and Sandy do at the prom (google that shit — that is not the Macarena), while snooty third years walked the rows making notes on their judgy little clipboards.
Next, we were split into small groups to sing ‘You’re The One That I Want’. Everybody in my section was about 200 decibels louder than me. I was drowned in sound. My meek little mouse voice was flattened by the warbling am-dram foghorns. By the time we got to read a part, the fact that it was Frenchie (the best one, because you get to do the accent) made no odds.
“That was a good read, but you can’t sing and you can’t dance.”
Ah man.
I was gutted. My flat-mate Claire managed to scrape herself off the floor and audition for another (less in demand) society’s production of ‘The Wiz’ and got a part, but my ego was too bruised to even try.
So, I still don’t do Grease. And to this day I always sing as loudly as I possibly can, much to the annoyance of Brenda in my community choir who always tuts and complains she can’t hear herself.
There are worse things I could do, Brenda.
‘You’re The One That I Want’, the fifth best-selling single of all time, is taken from the soundtrack of the hit 1978 movie ‘Grease’. The word grease is not said once in the whole film.
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