'A Little More Love': Matthew Hild on Olivia Newton-John

You, too, might be wondering how a Georgia Tech lecturer, who specializes in Southern labor and agriculture history, ended up penning a biography of one of pop music’s biggest stars.  

But for Matthew Hild, the throughline is simple: the pandemic put a pause on his academic research, so he turned his attention to telling the story of soft-rock icon Andy Gibb, a personal favorite. Research for that book, “Arrow Through the Heart: The Biography of Andy Gibb,” led him to Gibb’s friendship with Olivia Newton-John. From there it was down the rabbit hole to “A Little More Love: The Life and Legacy of Olivia Newton-John,” Hild’s latest biography, released Wednesday. “A Little More Love” traces Newton-John’s career from her early-1970s country-pop records through her pivot to pop rock, her humanitarian work, and the cancer treatment center in Australia she considered her greatest legacy. 

The forgotten country chapter 

Before “Grease,” before “Physical,” Olivia Newton-John was considered a country artist, one successful enough to win the Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year award in 1974. The response from Nashville was less than celebratory.