The pop singer, who died today, created powerful futuristic records that changed the course of music for ever
By Alex Needham
The Guardian
17 May 2012
Donna Summer will be remembered as the queen of disco, but in fact her best records transformed not just dancefloors but the course of pop music. Released in 1977, the year of punk, her single I Feel Love was as radical as any record that has got to No 1. Sparks were a glam rock band until they heard I Feel Love, when they decided to throw their entire musical direction in the dustbin and make pulsing, synthesised disco records with its producer, Giorgio Moroder. Seeking to assert his credentials as a man of impeccable musical taste, Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream used to boast that he had bought both I Feel Love and the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen on the same day. The combination of silvery female soul vocals with state-of-the-art electronic production, which has been responsible for some of pop's greatest and most groundbreaking singles, from Janet Jackson to Aaliyah to Beyoncé, was pioneered right there by Summer and her two Italian producers - Moroder and Pete Bellotte.
Working from the unlikely location of Munich, the trio managed to fuse soul with the surgical precision of Kraftwerk, creating a record so far ahead of its time that pop took a good 20 years to catch up. Like the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, I Feel Love is a studio recording so perfect that covering it – or even playing it live – would be pointless, though many have tried. The sparsest ingredients – lyrics that could be written on the back of a beermat with room to spare, a bassline that, in theory, a three-year-old could play – are turned, in Summer and Moroder's hands, into an entire world of futuristic wonder. Moroder took a Moog Modulator synthesiser and put a delay on the bassline, creating the "dugga-dugga-dugga" sound that has galvanised dancefloors ever since. Summer's vocal is no less wonderful – ethereal and otherworldly.
If that was all Summer had ever done, her place in pop would be assured, but she made a number of standout records that have influenced musicians right across the spectrum, from rock to R&B. The drum break on her 1979 album track Our Love was filched for the beginning of New Order's Blue Monday, who also put the epic Patrick Cowley mix of I Feel Love on their Back to Mine compilation. Her version of Jon and Vangelis's State of Independence was covered by Chrissie Hynde. Part of Summer's strength was her versatility. The high concept of her album I Remember Yesterday was that each track would pastiche the sounds of a different decade, from the magnificent Love's Unkind, her take on Phil Spector, to I Feel Love (which represented The Future) and her voice is at home in any style Moroder and Bellotte can throw at her. Pitted against Barbra Streisand on the scenery-chewing 1982 duet No More Tears (Enough Is Enough), Summer demonstrates in grand style that she can face down any diva. Every time someone demolishes Summer's On the Radio on a TV talent show, remembering the original – surely one of the greatest ever songs about that medium – only reaffirms Summer's technical and emotional mastery. Even the records she made with Stock Aitken Waterman in the late 80s, a collaboration which seemed sacrilegious at the time, are animated by the power and sincerity of her voice.
And then, of course, there is sex. Summer's single Love to Love You Baby announced her arrival to the world – 17 minutes of groaning, whimpering and moaning. Get past its use by Mike Leigh in Abigail's Party – which made it an icon of bad taste thanks to it being played by the awful Beverly – and Love to Love You Baby is charged with feelings of liberation, a pre-Aids world of pansexual freedom and adventure. While Summer renounced her raunchy past, betraying her gay fans in the process, her best records still pulsate with that spirit, the lifeforce of pop itself. At only 63, that life force was extinguished.
Related:
Donna Summer Interview (1976) -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/17/donna-summer-classic-interview?intcmp=122
Working from the unlikely location of Munich, the trio managed to fuse soul with the surgical precision of Kraftwerk, creating a record so far ahead of its time that pop took a good 20 years to catch up. Like the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, I Feel Love is a studio recording so perfect that covering it – or even playing it live – would be pointless, though many have tried. The sparsest ingredients – lyrics that could be written on the back of a beermat with room to spare, a bassline that, in theory, a three-year-old could play – are turned, in Summer and Moroder's hands, into an entire world of futuristic wonder. Moroder took a Moog Modulator synthesiser and put a delay on the bassline, creating the "dugga-dugga-dugga" sound that has galvanised dancefloors ever since. Summer's vocal is no less wonderful – ethereal and otherworldly.
If that was all Summer had ever done, her place in pop would be assured, but she made a number of standout records that have influenced musicians right across the spectrum, from rock to R&B. The drum break on her 1979 album track Our Love was filched for the beginning of New Order's Blue Monday, who also put the epic Patrick Cowley mix of I Feel Love on their Back to Mine compilation. Her version of Jon and Vangelis's State of Independence was covered by Chrissie Hynde. Part of Summer's strength was her versatility. The high concept of her album I Remember Yesterday was that each track would pastiche the sounds of a different decade, from the magnificent Love's Unkind, her take on Phil Spector, to I Feel Love (which represented The Future) and her voice is at home in any style Moroder and Bellotte can throw at her. Pitted against Barbra Streisand on the scenery-chewing 1982 duet No More Tears (Enough Is Enough), Summer demonstrates in grand style that she can face down any diva. Every time someone demolishes Summer's On the Radio on a TV talent show, remembering the original – surely one of the greatest ever songs about that medium – only reaffirms Summer's technical and emotional mastery. Even the records she made with Stock Aitken Waterman in the late 80s, a collaboration which seemed sacrilegious at the time, are animated by the power and sincerity of her voice.
And then, of course, there is sex. Summer's single Love to Love You Baby announced her arrival to the world – 17 minutes of groaning, whimpering and moaning. Get past its use by Mike Leigh in Abigail's Party – which made it an icon of bad taste thanks to it being played by the awful Beverly – and Love to Love You Baby is charged with feelings of liberation, a pre-Aids world of pansexual freedom and adventure. While Summer renounced her raunchy past, betraying her gay fans in the process, her best records still pulsate with that spirit, the lifeforce of pop itself. At only 63, that life force was extinguished.
Related:
Donna Summer Interview (1976) -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/17/donna-summer-classic-interview?intcmp=122
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