FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Thirty-Six: Donna Summer
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ON New Year’s Eve…
many people marked what would have been Donna Summer’s seventy-second birthday. She sadly died in 2012 but, in her lifetime, the American legend released seventeen studio albums and left a huge legacy. She gained prominence during the Disco era of the 1970s and became known as the ‘Queen of Disco’. According to Wikipedia: “Summer was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach No. 1 on Billboard's album chart: Live and More, Bad Girls and On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II. She became a cultural icon and her prominence on the dance charts, for which she was referred to as the Queen of Disco, made her not just one of the defining voices of that era, but also an influence on pop artists from Madonna to Beyoncé”. To honour the fantastic Donna Summer, this A Buyer’s Guide brings together he best work. As usual, I recommend four albums that are worth getting; one that is a bit underrated still and deserves a new spin; her final studio album, in addition to a great book that provides background and story. Dive into the essential work of…
PHOTO CREDIT: Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images
A much-missed artist.
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The Four Essential Albums
Love to Love You Baby
Release Date: 27th August, 1975
Labels: Casablanca/Oasis
Producer: Pete Bellotte
Standout Tracks: Full of Emptiness/Whispering Waves/Pandora's Box
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=76255&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/210folYgKMSZAz4IiqDnmy?si=NPNHfDjcRY25TKFiA4IPUw
Review:
“"Love to Love You Baby"'s 16 minutes and 48 seconds of arousal and refill -- ticklishly sensitive rhythm and fusion -- threw disco into a tizzy overnight, but the tonally starved blues-of-isolation on the B-side isn't to be missed, either: the broken promises Donna Summer bemoans in "Full of Emptiness"; "Need-a-Man Blues," with its unrequitedly sexy guitar rhythm as out of range of Summer's voice as she of satisfaction; the imaginary seaside hold-me in "Whispering Waves"; and "Pandora's Box," where Summer and guitar scream icily at one another as they turn their backs on each other's body music. Hunger without recourse; essential disco” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Love to Love You Baby
Bad Girls
Release Date: 25 April, 1979
Label: Casablanca
Producers: Giorgio Moroder/Pete Bellotte
Standout Tracks: Bad Girls/Dim All the Lights/Our Love
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=25893&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/58GjBhQvLHwfQFJtdP9Oxg?si=P-B4gYXrSxajcFRmu5qRCA
Review:
“The closest thing to a social comment on Bad Girls comes in "Sunset People," a sweeping, high-rise view of Hollywood. Against an icy refrain of "doin' it right — night after night," the song telescopes the nightmarish glamour world of the Sunset Strip—with its teenage prostitutes, billboards, foreign cars and star worship — into an evocation of pleasureseeking as cold as it is tantalizing. If there's a moral here, it's in the music's ominous suggestion of the boredom beyond glitter and in the lyrics' telegraphed equation of the disco ethos with Hollywood and hooking. "Sunset People" just might be the disco culture's "A Day in the Life."
In one of the photos on the LP's inner sleeve, Donna Summer's co-producer, Giorgio Moroder, poses as her pimp. That's as good a metaphor as any for their musical interaction. Moroder's technique simultaneously mocks and exalts the star, who becomes both a goddess and a sideshow attraction in a futuristic technosex amusement park. Though this record's production contains nothing as startlingly novel as the sequenced bass synthesizer of "I Feel Love," the best tracks strike a perfect blend of German Eurodisco and American rock and soul that ultimately transcends the disco environment. Bad Girls' aural style is a lot sparer than the mechanized swirls of "Mac-Arthur Park Suite" and Once upon a Time....The new album's sound effects — e.g., the backward tape loops that sound like speeding cars in "Sunset People"— seem integral to the material” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: Hot Stuff
The Wanderer
Release Date: 20th October, 1980
Label: Geffen
Producers: Giorgio Moroder/Pete Bellotte
Standout Tracks: Running for Cover/Cold Love/Who Do You Think You're Foolin'
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=27128&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5K5zdagMRQFtpwFpzoxqCt?si=PI3BXhR3QOOLRmCN1MAoHA
Review:
“Even in The Wanderer's most awesome and shattering love song, the brittle and brilliant "Cold Love," she's triumphant: "Hope in the dark, love in the light/I'll keep on looking for someone who's right." In the end, this triumph is so total that the closing number, "I Believe in Jesus" (a statement of belief so naive it ought to seem puerile), sounds completely natural and fitting.
"I Believe in Jesus" is the first convincing gospel-based vocal performance of Summer's career. Based on the militant fundamentalist hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," the composition escapes being cloying only by the narrowest of margins–a chorus so perfectly sung that to deny it is practically inconceivable: "I believe in Jesus you know I know him oh so well/And I'm going to heaven by and by 'cause I already been through hell."
These words evoke images of those satin jackets that soldiers used to bring back from Vietnam–jackets that displayed a map of the country with large stars locating Khe Sanh or Da Nang and the same flat statements about having witnessed hell on earth. In its way, I think, The Wanderer is a road map of Donna Summer's soul. And while nothing on it matches the hellishness of actual combat, the analogy is less a conceit than a metaphor that the rest of this resounding record gives her the absolute right to use” - Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: The Wanderer
Another Place and Time
Release Date: 20th March, 1989
Labels: Atlantic/PWL
Producers: Stock Aitken Waterman
Standout Tracks: I Don't Wanna Get Hurt/When Love Takes Over You/Breakaway
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Donna-Summer-Another-Place-And-Time/master/26375
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/01wjr9UN1VCEUUXF3gZOaE?si=iw2UH1zpRC6Ajau7R3a0yQ
Review:
“In the late '80s, the Mike Stock/Matt Aitken/Pete Waterman team was as important to European dance-pop as Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte had been to Euro-disco in the late '70s. Many pop critics hated Stock/Aitken/Waterman's slick, high-gloss approach with a passion, but what critics like and what the public buys are often two different things -- and the British team had the Midas touch when it came to Dead or Alive, Samantha Fox, Rick Astley, and other '80s favorites. So, for Donna Summer, working with them was a logical decision when, in 1989, she made a temporary return to a Euro-dance-pop setting. Produced, written, and arranged by Stock, Aitken & Waterman, 1989's Another Place and Time is arguably Summer's most European-sounding release since the late '70s. This CD came 14 years after the erotic "Love to Love You, Baby," and from a Euro-dance perspective (as opposed to a Top 40, adult contemporary or urban contemporary perspective), Another Place & Time is one of the best albums that Summer provided in the '80s. Critics can hate Stock, Aitken & Waterman all they want, but the team certainly does right by Summer on exuberant, club-friendly Euro-dance/Hi-NRG gems like "Whatever Your Heart Desires," "I Don't Wanna Get Hurt," and the hit "This Time I Know It's for Real." Not all of the songs are aimed at the dancefloor, but 90 percent of the time, this album is unapologetically dance-oriented. Contrary to popular wisdom, disco didn't really die with the '70s -- disco simply went high-tech and changed its name to dance-pop in the '80s, and it isn't hard to see the parallels between this release and Summer's work with Moroder and Bellotte in the mid- to late '70s. Another Place and Time is an excellent CD that Summer's fans should not overlook” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: This Time I Know It's For Real
The Underrated Gem
She Works Hard for the Money
Release Date: 13th June, 1983
Label: Mercury
Producer: Michael Omartian
Standout Tracks: Woman/Love Has a Mind of Its Own/Unconditional Love
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=86643&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0x3qYJCMrhJPgi7hTqxEl2?si=EcnmLcOSTSaWwSmBrhuJEA
Review:
“Given Summer's bad-girl past, it's sometimes hard to distinguish sacred from profane; Summer is at her best when she keeps us guessing. "He's a Rebel," with its West Side Story sense of drama, could be about James Dean, not Jesus Christ; the arrangement of "Stop Look and Listen" is jauntily upbeat, despite the fact that Summer is actually trying to rewrite "Sounds of Silence" (with lines like "The prophets of the times are written on streetcar walls"). The most obvious hit here is the title track, a driving Giorgio Moroder-style riff that was eclipsed this summer only by Moroder's own "Flashdance... What a Feeling." But "Unconditional Love" could be a sleeper – it's a collaboration with Musical Youth that's so utterly charming you scarcely wonder what Summer is doing preaching about Jah. The message, thank God, is mostly in the music” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: She Works Hard for the Money
The Final Album
Crayons
Release Date: 20th May, 2008
Label: Burgundy
Producers: Nathan DiGesare/Toby Gad/Jamie Houston/Greg Kurstin/Lester Mendez/Sebastian Arocha/ Morton/J. R. Rotem
Standout Tracks: Fame (The Game)/I'm a Fire/Be Myself Again
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=26587&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1p8EsJY5RCeEBvw74uQTrK?si=E49KiwKNTEWWGIN_0tV8BQ
Review:
“Donna Summer returns with an album that truly is a fine encapsulation of her career to date: a pinch of dance, some frothy pop; a power ballad or two, all given a 2008 sheen. Summer is keen to prove that she is no disco relic: Hers is the world of American Idol and the contemporary charts. Crayons is her first album of original material for 17 years. And it owes more to her golden Casablanca era as opposed to her last recorded work as the 80s became the 90s. Although her record company wanted an album of covers, Summer surprised them by her desire to record original material, inspired by her love of James Blunt's You're Beautiful (I kid you not).
Although it is far removed from her high-period Giorgio Moroder work, it's much better than even the die-hards could be expecting. The Queen Is Back is typical of much here; big, bold and impactful; I'm A Fire is the album's centre, while opener Stamp Your Feet is pure Gwen Stefani; Summer may not be a Hollerback girl, but she sure sounds like it. Musically, Christina Aguilera is referenced also on the title track.
Driving Down Brazil is enough to make a smooth radio programme froth at the mouth. It's Only Love is the show-stopper, full of the insouciance of the final side of Bad Girls as it closes the album.
The planet seems to be ready for her. In the US, the album has debuted within the Top 20, and I'm A Fire has topped the dance charts. It’s good to have her back, sounding quite so contemporary; or, at the very least, like an approximation of what Donna Summer sounding contemporary would sound like” – BBC
Choice Cut: Stamp Your Feet
The Donna Summer Book
Ordinary Girl: The Journey
Author: Donna Summer
Publication Date: 11th January, 2004
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Synopsis:
“Ordinary Girl is legendary singer-songwriter Donna Summer’s delightfully candid memoir about her journey from singing in a Boston church to her unexpected reign as the Queen of Disco and the tragedy and spiritual rebirth that followed. Donna Summer was born on New Year’s Eve in Boston. Her childhood was filled with music. Inspired by Mahalia Jackson, she began singing in church choirs at the age of ten. A few years later she joined a Boston rock group, and by the end of the 1960s she was living the life of an artist in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Soon after, Donna left the United States to join the German cast of Hair. She was still in her teens, a shy, ordinary girl who was suddenly feeling the jolt of the sexual revolution. She lived in Germany for seven and a half years, modeling, acting, falling in love, getting married, and giving birth to a daughter. She met a producer named Giorgio Moroder, and together they created a song called Love to Love You Baby. It became one of the world’s premier disco hits. Donna Summer returned to America as a star, a sex goddess who bore little resemblance to her own sense of who she was. She describes what that personal transformation felt like from the white-hot center of the disco era, and how, over the next two decades, it contributed to a sometimes harrowing spiritual journey. With heart and humor, Donna Summer relives the decadent days of disco and shows how she transcended them. This is the inspiring tale of an ordinary girl on an extraordinary journey” – Find-Book.co.uk
Order: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ordinary-Girl-Journey-Donna-Summer/dp/1400060311