The true Queen of contemporary music - Donna Summer

Even though I have already dedicated a post to Donna Summer, I just thought it’d be great to write a little more about this amazing (and, for the most part, unfairly ignored) singer. Let me begin by saying that Donna is a vocal heavyweight champion – if there were singer catfight tournaments (yay! :-) ), Donna would just trounce almost everyone else to a bloody throat. To be fair, we’d have to say that she’s the Mike Tyson of singers… only with class and without the bewildering stupidity. This said, it would be worth noticing that Donna hasn’t had a true hit in more than a decade, but that nevertheless is irrelevant to (us) disco fanatics, because Donna is The Diva par excellence and ought to be worshipped, because most things in contemporary music stem from what she did in the 70’s. And there’s nothing more to say about it. Uh-huh.

LaDonna Adrian Gaines was born in Boston amidst a very religious family who loved music and actively participated in the church choir. Which I guess explains why, as a teenager, Donna joined a rock band called The Crow, whose sound was largely based in Janis Joplin’s cringe-inducing ‘singing’ style, with which she butchered many a terrific song after swallowing enough drugs to make an elephant speak Aramaic – or die of an overdose, ahem. When the band failed to make any significant impact, Donna decided to drop from college, pack her things and leave for Germany, where she had been promised a lucrative recording contract. Soon enough, Donna became a musical theatre star, performing in everything imaginable from Hair to Porgy and Bess.
She also married a theatrical producer named Helmut Sommer, from whom she took her artistic name, and sang hundreds of demos that would become hits for many other performers of the time.



Soon enough she met Giorgio Moroder, who produced her first European hits and one day convinced her to record the ‘song’ that would make her known to international audiences: Love To Love You Baby. Initially seen as a joke -understandably, I’d say- they didn’t want to release it until a friend of Giorgio (who was either deaf or completely stoned) told him it was marvellous. They believed the hearing-impaired druggie’s advice, and the song became a huge hit on the strength of the second dullest orgasm in history - as Jane Birkin and incest-loving weirdo Serge Gainsbourg had already taken the 1st place for themselves with that horrid pool of vomit, 'Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus'. However, after that Donna went on to record some amazing material that was worthy of her exceptional voice, and many of her songs were enormous hits that have rightly become timeless classics. Others, such as the then groundbreaking 'I Feel Love', are credited with giving birth to techno music.

Unfortunately, Donna wasn’t happy with her image because it wasn’t Christian-clean, so she decided to take an abrupt turn in 1980, as the disco movement was being strangled by people with no taste whatsoever. This change, which could have been equivalent to career immolation for anyone else, gave Donna the creative freedom to indulge herself and helped her to survive the disco debacle. Which she did with very uneven results – while some of her efforts are quite sublime, especially when she delved into dance pop and rock, her R&B and funk attempts are quite unpleasant to the ear, and ought to be treated with caution by anyone who has a minimal degree of respect for their auditive health. And maybe for this reason, Donna slowly but steadily fell under the mainstream’s radar, only to be briefly resuscitated from her 'nostalgia act' status in 1999, during a spectacular VH1 special.



Thus, we come to the tracks I’ve selected! At last! :-) If you want to read more about Donna, visit my previous post about her. If you need to buy her records (and you know you do), go to Amazon.

MacArthur Park

This is one of Donna’s greatest hits ever – one of the four massive number ones that are part of her career’s many highlights. It is also one of my favourite songs ever, as long as she is the one performing it, of course. The best thing about it is that it showcases her exceptional vocal range quite well, since the melody is quite difficult. In fact, it does so to such degree of perfection that it makes one forget about the pointless lyrics, enabling us to concentrate on the amazing horns and Donna’s soaring high notes. Video of a spectacular live performance.

Hot Stuff [12” Version]

This is, again, one of Donna’s greatest classics and a very special track, because it indicates the precise point in which she began to break away from the purely disco sound that had characterized most of her work until the album Bad Girls, from which this song was taken. Or maybe we could say that it proves how versatile disco music is in reality by successfully fusing what is an aggressive rock song with disco’s basic 4/4 beat. Not only is this fabulous, but it shows the how innovative Donna and her producers really were. Video from her VH1 special.

This Time I Know It’s For Real

What can be said about this song? It is pop perfection. It takes the very best elements of 80’s pop music and displays them all in a three and a half minute journey to Paradise (oh, how I love my cheesy comments – not ;-) ). Anyway, I truly recommend you to give a listen to this, especially because it is easily some of the best music that Stock, Aitken and Waterman ever produced. Video.

I Will Go With You (Con Te Partirò) [Hex Hector Extended Mix]

At first I wasn’t sure about posting this song, because even though I like the original, this remix has some instrumental clutter that is frankly unnecessary and becomes annoying after a while. Still, the main body of the song is simply sublime, and Donna emerges victorious at the end of this spectacular melodic tour-de-force, which few people can even dream about touching. If you like dance music, you’ll love this – after you pass the weird and tinny first part of the song. Video of a spectacular live performance.

No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) - duet with Barbra Streisand

This is the 12" version of the legendary duet with The Streisand, to which I've already dedicated an entire post. I just thought it was pertinent to add it for the sake of completeness :-).