Line #54 Music/DonnaSummer


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/summer.jpg]]
2
3	->''"Mommy, what's wrong with the lady on the record? Why is she moaning? Is she hurt?"''
4	-->-- A Last.FM user on "Love to Love You Baby". Presumably, this is what he said when he first heard the song.
5
6	Donna Summer (born [=LaDonna=] Adrian Gaines, December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012) ...ah, how to describe her?
7
8	She was the [[FanNickname Queen of Disco]]! Oh, but so much more.
9
10	[=LaDonna=] Gaines was born in UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} and originally trained as a gospel singer before becoming successful in RAndB and {{Pop}} as well. She started her career in Europe, joining theatrical companies in Munich and Vienna and releasing several early singles in French and German. Her big break came when she met producers Music/GiorgioMoroder and Pete Bellotte, who managed her for the rest of TheSeventies, and recorded the single "Love to Love You Baby" (1975). She made several concept albums before reaching her peak with ''Bad Girls'' (1979), a double album that mixed RockAndRoll, {{Funk}}, {{Blues}}, {{Soul}} and ElectronicMusic to massive success. She soon broke from {{Disco}}.
11
12	After the 1970s, she had success with songs such as "She Works Hard for the Money" and "This Time I Know It's for Real", although she never recaptured her former glory. Her last album, ''Crayons'', was released in 2008.
13
14	She died at her home in Florida after a battle with lung cancer on May 17, 2012.
15
16	----
17	!!Studio albums:
18	* ''Lady of the Night'' (1974). Two of the song off the albums were modest hits.
19	* ''Love to Love You Baby'' (1975). Her breakthrough album, a certified gold album. The album was named after its major song, which became an international hit.
20	* ''A Love Trilogy'' (1976). Certified gold.
21	* ''Four Seasons of Love'' (1976). Certified gold.
22	* ''Music/IRememberYesterday'' (1977). Certified platinum.
23	* ''Once Upon a Time'' (1977). Certified gold.
24	* ''Music/{{Bad Girls\|1979}}'' (1979). Certified platinum. Her best-selling album overall, and called her best.
25	* ''The Wanderer'' (1980). A [[NewWaveMusic New Wave]]-style album. Certified gold.
26	* ''I'm a Rainbow'' (1981). Her last album with Moroder and Bellotte, recorded in 1981 but shelved. Bootlegged copies were circulated for years. Officially released in 1996. Never a major sales hit, but well-received by music critics and Summer's fanbase.
27	* ''Donna Summer'' (1982). A SelfTitledAlbum. Certified gold. While several of its songs sold well when released as singles, the album underperformed in the sales charts.
28	* ''She Works Hard for the Money'' (1983). Certified gold. The titular song, conceived as a tribute to the working woman, became her greatest hit of TheEighties. Her popularity increased when its music video became a hit with the {{Creator/MTV}} audience.
29	* ''Cats Without Claws'' (1984). First Summer album since the 1970s to not sell well enough to be certified golden. It peaked at #40 in the charts. Music critics view it as a decent but unspectacular effort.
30	* ''All Systems Go'' (1987). A single song from the album, "Dinner with Gershwin", became a significant hit. Most of the other songs were considered forgettable, resulting in the album becoming a commercial and critical flop.
31	* ''Another Place and Time'' (1989). A {{Europop}}-style album, a commercial and critical comeback. Certified golden in the United Kingdom, with several of its songs topping the charts across Europe. Curiously, the album underperformed in North America. "This Time I Know It's for Real", from this album, was her last ''Billboard'' top 10 (and top 40) hit, at least on the Hot 100.
32	* ''Mistaken Identity'' (1991). A commercial flop. A single song off this album, "When Love Cries", became a notable ContemporaryRAndB hit.
33	* ''Christmas Spirit'' (1994). Album mostly featuring traditional ChristmasSongs, performed in the style of {{Soul}} Music. A few original songs were included, though nothing particularly memorable.
34	* ''Crayons'' (2008). First album consisting only of original songs since 1991. The album peaked at #17 in the charts, her greatest commercial hit since the 1980s. Three of its songs reached #1 in the dance charts. It was, however, her last full album. A few singles followed the album, though it is still seen as her swan song.
35	!!Live albums:
36	* ''Live and More'' (1978). Certified platinum.
37	* ''Live & More Encore'' (1999). The most commercially successful Summer album of TheNineties. Mostly covering older hits, but introduced two new songs. Both ''I Will Go with You (Con te partirò)'' and ''Love Is the Healer'' reached #1 in the dance charts of the year.
38	----
39	!!"Looking for some hot tropes, baby, this evening, I want some hot tropes baby tonight":
40
41	* AwardBaitSong: "The Power of One" for ''Anime/Pokemon2000''.
42	* ConceptAlbum: Donna made a few of these during the Seventies and Eighties. ''Four Seasons of Love'' was a short album detailing the stages of a love affair like the changing of seasons, ''I Remember Yesterday'' is an homage to music through the ages to the present and future, and ''Once Upon a Time'' [[CinderellaPlot tells a modern version of the Cinderella story]].
43	* DownerEnding: "Hostage", from the pre-disco album ''Lady of the Night'', is sung from the point of view of a woman whose husband is kidnapped. Things go FromBadToWorse and by the end of the song, she's a widow.
44	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Donna might be known as the queen of disco, but you would never know it listening to her first album, 1974's ''Lady of the Night''. This debut was much more of a rural-feeling folk pop record, with some light influences from country of all genres. It wasn't until the follow-up album, ''Love to Love You Baby'', that her true musical direction was born.
45	* EpicRocking:
46	** The album version of "Love to Love You Baby" runs 16:49, the entirety of Side 1.
47	** "Try Me, I Know We Can Make It," on ''A Love Trilogy'', runs 17:57, the entirety of Side 1.
48	** ''Four Seasons of Love'' has "Spring Affair" (8:29) and "Summer Fever" (8:06). ''I Remember Yesterday'' is when she abandoned this trope and started focusing on songs of more conventional length (though ironically, a 15:43 Patrick Cowley remix of "I Feel Love" from this album would become one of the best-known examples of this trope).
49	* FemaleEmpowermentSong: "She Works Hard for the Money" praises a woman who works for tips, is needed and cared for by her customers, and wonders why some people have everything. The song's chorus is "She works hard for the money so you better treat her right." The song doesn't specify her line of work, but in the MusicVideo of the song she's a harried waitress.
50	* GodIsLoveSongs: "Unconditional Love" featuring Musical Youth.
51	* HereWeGoAgain: ''Four Seasons of Love'' begins with "Spring Affair" and then follows the romance through the seasons to its end in "Winter Melody". Then the cycle starts all over again with the final track, a reprise of "Spring Affair".
52	* TheImmodestOrgasm: In "Love to Love You, Baby".
53	* IncrediblyLongNote: "Dim All the Lights" holds the record for the longest note held in an American Top 40 pop hit, at 16 seconds.
54	* IntercourseWithYou: She's mostly remembered for these kinds of songs, as it was the theme for some of her biggest hits: "Love To Love You Baby", "Hot Stuff", "I Feel Love",... The rest ("Heaven Knows," "On the Radio," etc.) mostly fell under SillyLoveSongs.
55	* JobSong: "She Works Hard for the Money" is about the singer encouraging the listener to respect a blue-collar worker who had been working for 28 years.
56	* LongestSongGoesFirst: the title track of ''Love To Love You Baby'', and "Try Me, I Know We Can Make It" on ''A Love Trilogy'' each take up the entire first side of their respective albums. "Spring Affair" on ''Four Seasons of Love'' and "Get Ethnic" on ''Mistaken Identity'' don't dominate quite so much but are still their albums' longest tracks.
57	* LoveLetter: One apparently fell out of her ex's "old brown overcoat", someone found it, and "They said it really loud/They said it on the air, on the radio"
58	* MarilynManeuver: The back cover of ''Four Seasons of Love''.
59	* RadioSong: "On the Radio," about how a man's letter to TheOneThatGotAway is found by someone and read on the radio. The woman hears it and reunites with him.
60	* RearrangeTheSong: Her signature song, ''Love to Love You Baby'' was more or less inspired by ''Je t'aime... moi non plus''(literally meaning ''I Love You... Me Neither''), which was originally performed by Creator/JaneBirkin and her then-lover Music/SergeGainsbourg. A 1969 controversial, but internationally-famous French pop song, which Summer subsequently covered herself. As for ''Love to Love You Baby'', the album version was quite heavily reworked, as you would expect given that it was expanded from a 3:23-long 7" to nearly seventeen minutes.
61	* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: From "She Works Hard For The Money":
62	--> ''Never sell out she never will\
63	Not for a dollar bill''
64	* ShoutOut: "Creator/FredAstaire"
65	* {{Sitcom}}: Was "Aunt Oona from Altoona" on ''Series/FamilyMatters''.
66	* SomethingBlues: "Need-A-Man Blues" on ''Love to Love You Baby''
67	* VisualPun: The trope image was used for the cover art to the "On The Radio" single as well as a similarly titled GreatestHitsAlbum - note that she's literally "on the radio", as in sitting atop it.
68	* {{Working Class Hero}}ine: The subject of "She Works Hard For The Money."

Context Music / DonnaSummer