John Travolta's Albums

Immediately following CARRIE, John Travolta, who began his career in the musical theatre and was already a star on the small-screen thanks to "Welcome Back Kotter" and the movie of the week THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE, became one of the biggest actors of the era with films like SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, GREASE and URBAN COWBOY taking in massive ticket sales. Not surprisingly, Travolta tried to launch a music career, beginning with John Travolta, his self-titled album in 1976 -- promotional materials for the album and back cover of one of the singles even made mention of CARRIE. This first album was mainly light pop with a few disco-influenced tunes that were very indicative of the time. Included was "A Girl Like You," a song that would later be covered by his CARRIE co-star, William Katt, on his album "Secret Smiles." The ballad "Let Her In" became a hit single, and he recorded a follow-up album, "Can't Let You Go," which was released in 1977. The second album continued with the pop, but traded in the disco beats for the bluesy rock in "Easy Evil."A repackaged reissue of the two albums, titled "Travolta Fever," was released on the heels of the mega-hit SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. The soundtrack for GREASE followed in 1978, and despite the fact that it remains one of the best-selling soundtracks of all-time, it would be the last album that Travolta had a considerable amount of singing on for several decades.

When Travolta reunited with Olivia Newton-John for the box-office flop TWO OF A KIND in 1983, the soundtrack featured the duet "Take a Chance." The film was not an all-out musical, but the song did score a montage scene in the movie. A music video was filmed to help promote the single, but it got minimal airplay on MTV. Coincidentally, that seldom-seen music video bears more than a teeny bit of similarity to the "Suddenly" scene in Newton-John's film XANADU.

1986 was one of his final studio efforts until the musical remake of HAIRSPRAY in 2007, when he appeared on L Ron Hubbard's all-star Scientology album, "The Road to Freedom," lending his voice to both the title cut and "The ARC Song."

Due to his endless popularity, the two studio albums have had numerous re-releases over the years, often including additional tunes from GREASE. I question if any of the CD releases are actually official -- the covers generally look like bootlegs and the releases that I've heard have some anomalies that sound as if they might have been ripped from vinyl LPs rather than analog tapes.