John Travolta: A Timeline of Awkward Musical Moments

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To us, John Travolta will always be Vincent Vega, the prickly anti-hero of Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 masterpiece Pulp Fiction. We don’t like to think of that movie where he played a crazy, fat angel or Nic Cage’s doppelganger, or a sad, suburban biker dude. And we definitely don’t like to think of him sitting in an all-white room staring intently into his young daughter’s eyes as she describes her fantasy world — complete with unicorns. Yes, it’s just as creepy as it sounds. That video, and a handful of other magical musical moments from Travolta’s career, after the cut.

2009 – “Every Little Step” So John Travolta decided to cover an old Bobby Brown song with his daughter Ella Bleu and shoot a music video featuring clips from his crappy middle-aged man movie, Old Dogs. Make sure to hang in there for the spoken word part at 2:13.

2008 – “I Thought I Lost You” Which is more embarrassing: doing a duet with Miley Cyrus to help promote your animated film Bolt or rocking that ridiculous beard?

2007 – “Welcome to the 60’s” Don’t get us wrong: We love Travolta as Hairspray‘s obese housewife/shut-in Edna Turnblad — even if his Baltimore accent is a little nuts and there’s no way he can live up to performances by Divine or Harvey. But finding out that he wears a 54 EEE in this clip — it’s awkward. And then there’s the fact that he sings the tail-end of this song in a weird scat voice. Fast-forward to 5:34 see what we mean.

1989 – “Town Without Pity” We’re not sure what we find the most upsetting about this scene from Look Who’s Talking: how hot Kirstie Alley looks; how comfortable Travolta seems with gratuitous pelvic thrusts; or how much we loved this movie when we were only 8 years old.

1984- “Take a Chance” Now this is what we call a duet. Heh. This song was featured on the soundtrack for Twist of Fate, an ’80s movie that Travolta starred in with Olivia Newton-John.

1978 – “You’re the One That I Want” Our long-held discomfort with this scene from Grease stems from the moment where a gyrating Travolta says, “It’s electrifying,” and then falls to the ground.

The late ’70s – “The Barbarino Song” So. Much. Gold.

The early ’70s – The “Safeguard Bath Soap” Song This homoerotic commercial was Travolta’s big break. Bonus points for finding a rhyme with “hexachlorophene.”