DONNA SUMMER (with Black Girl Songbook's Danyel Smith)
Author of Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop and host of The Ringer podcast Black Girl Songbook, Danyel Smith, joins DJ Louie to explore the work, impact and legacy of the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer. Louie and Danyel begin with Donna\u2019s early life as the eccentric Black girl in her Boston community during the 1950s and \u201860s, her move to Germany in 1968 to star in the musical Hair which eventually led to a star-crossed meeting with producers Giorgio Morodor and Pete Bellotte who would go on to be her primary collaborators, and their breakthrough with the radically orgasmic disco anthem \u201cLove to Love You Baby\u201d in 1975. Louie and Danyel then cover Donna, Giorgio and Pete\u2019s ambitious run of concept albums through the mid \u201870s, their seismic innovations on 1977\u2019s \u201cI Feel Love\u201d, considered the first electronic dance song, Donna\u2019s status as the poster child for both the music and aesthetics of the disco movement thanks in part to her role in the film Thank God It\u2019s Friday and its luscious Oscar-winning smash \u201cLast Dance\u201d, her magnum opus, 1979\u2019s Bad Girls which set the template for the modern pop event album, and how she managed to outrun the sudden decline of disco thanks to 1983\u2019s economical new-wave anthem \u201cShe Works Hard for the Money\u201d. They conclude with Donna\u2019s commercial decline in the latter 1980s, her Born-Again Christianity and controversial statements about the AIDS Epidemic and the gay community, her absolutely massive impact on the sound and look of pop stardom and how her legacy- and that of the movement she defined- has evolved over time. Finally, Louie and Danyel rank Donna Summer in the official Pop Pantheon.\xa0
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