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Donna Summer

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Donna Summer was born in 1948 as Donna Adrian Gaines in Boston. She sang in church as a child and in 1968 left for Munich, for a part in the German version of the musical Hair. There she met the producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Together they made disco that increasingly came from machines, and she became known as the Queen of Disco.

Music and breakthrough

The first hit was Love to Love You Baby (1975). Moroder sent a sixteen-minute version to the discotheques. Two years later I Feel Love closed the album I Remember Yesterday (1977). Every track on that record referred to a different era, and this last track was meant to let people hear the future. Apart from the vocals and the bass drum, played by the drummer Keith Forsey, everything comes from a Moog synthesizer with a sequencer. In July 1977 it became her only number 1 hit in England. In 1979 the American number ones Hot Stuff and Bad Girls followed, and in 1983 She Works Hard for the Money.

Influence

I Feel Love showed that dance music could be entirely electronic. According to David Bowie, Brian Eno came running into the studio with the record: this was the sound of the future. From the song grew hi-NRG and Italo disco, and later house and techno. The producing trio Stock Aitken Waterman built further in the 1980s on the hi-NRG tempo. Summer died in 2012 in Naples, Florida. A year later she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Listening

Listening tip. In I Feel Love the bass line from the Moog runs like a sequencer pattern that never stops. Listen to how the bass jumps quickly back and forth, while the bass drum, the only truly played drum, hits on every beat and Summer sings high and floating above it.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

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Mentioned in other articles

See also

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (en): Donna Summer
  2. bpl.org
  3. bostonglobe.com
  4. Wikipedia (en): I Feel Love
  5. Wikipedia (en): Stock Aitken Waterman
Categories: ArtistsSynth disco and Hi-NRGDisco and synth-pop scores