MAKE A MOVE

 

“Make A Move On Me”

 

Music & Lyric: Tom Snow & John Farrar 

Song History: Recorded by Olivia Newton-John. The follow-up single to her huge U.S. #1 Hit Physical, it peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

TOM SNOW : When I was in music school I entertained the romantic notion of one day finding a mentor or musical advisor who would provide encouragement, constructive criticism, philosophical wisdom, and anything else I needed to expand my learning and broaden my horizon. Never happened. Had to learn, as I imagine 99% of my colleagues did, the hard way. Trial and error, on my own. 

I did find, however, a great example in John Farrar of what it takes to excel at the art of songwriting. Until I worked with John I didn’t fully understand the lengths one needed to go to in order to craft a hit song. He taught by example and knowing John I’m sure he never realized it. He just did what he did and I was smart enough to pay close attention to the way a master craftsman works. 

I consider my collaboration with John to be the single most important learning experience of my career. It was the moment I became a Professional. (Hopefully I have passed the knowledge on to someone else.) 

“Make A Move On Me” was a fun song to write. We started with a blank page and over a period of two or three weeks pulled the tune out of thin air. When we recorded the track in David Holman’s Laurel Canyon garage John had me playing the underlying synthesizer riff over and over until it was perfectly “quantized”. 

Ah, the days before powerful sequencing programs and one touch buttons to make everything sound swell.”Make A Move On Me” is a personal favorite of mine as it has a sophisticated harmonic foundation, traveling from the key of A minor to E flat major and back again while managing to sound uncomplicated. 

We came up with a pretty cute lyric, too. It was the follow up to Steve Kipner’s smash, “Let’s Get Physical”, which had the effect of making it the quietest million selling single of the year. It was a privilege and a whole lot of fun working with John. I was blessed to have done so.

FROM POPMATTERS :  John Farrar and Tom Snow led each other to new heights with “Make a Move On Me”, arguably the duo’s crowning achievement as collaborators. “Tom and I both loved chord structures,” says Farrar. “Sometimes he would play the chord sequence and I would play a melody on the top or vice versa. With ‘Make a Move on Me’, I remember I couldn’t come up with anything in the verse. Tom came up with that synth part that was great.” The high-pitched melody that Snow conceived for the intro primed listeners for three minutes of pop bliss.

“‘Make a Move on Me’ has three distinct tonal centers,” says Snow. “It starts off in F and then goes to A-minor and then John figured a way to get it to E-flat in the chorus. He came up with that brilliant [sings] ‘Won’t you spare me all the charms and take me in your arms / I can’t wait’. It was amazing. There are very few pop songs that have that kind of harmonic structure to it. I thought we did a hell of a good job on that one.

“John had Carlos Vega come in to do the drum loop and I believe he came back a second time to fill out the track. I came up with the bass line. John loved it and had me play it. He said, ‘Let’s make a loop!’ I’d be sitting there in David’s studio, sweating, trying to get it absolutely perfect, doing manually what Pro Tools does with a button now. We didn’t have sequencers at that point. John would say, ‘Do it again Tom. It’s almost there.’ That went on for a couple of hours until it was absolutely spot-on, in the pocket. I think we made a four-bar loop. David cut the loop and then edited it into other parts of the tune.”

Sonically, “Make a Move on Me” is a shining paragon of synthesized sounds. The Prophet-5 synthesizer, in particular, polished the song with a warm, high-tech gloss. “When the Prophet-5 came out, it had this milky, sweet sound,” Holman notes. “It was one of the best-sounding things. The Oberheim was kind of cool but the Prophet fit so well into the recordings and it was just a fabulous instrument. It looked really sexy.”

Newton-John only amplified the sexiness of “Make a Move on Me” as her voice conveyed everything from simmering desire to unmitigated euphoria.

Making Her Move: Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Physical’ Phenomenon Revisited | PopMatters

 

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