Disco Never Dies

If I’d been born a decade earlier, I might have been a Donna Summer fan like I’m a Madonna fan now. I was not much more than a casual fan of Summer’s music, although before her death I was thinking, “She was pretty good. Why do I not have her on my iPod?” I’ve heard so much of her music over the years that it’s almost in the background and taken for granted.

So I listened to Steve’s copy of On the Radio after she died. Summer was deeply talented and went beyond just disco to flirt with other genres like rock and new wave. “Hot Stuff” is still nasty with a tangy synth sound. “Bad Girls” is pretty catchy for a song about whores. I like the wistful sound of “Heaven Knows” and “On the Radio” is fun. “Love to Love You Baby” still sounds lush and lusty. “I Feel Love” is, even after 35 years, hypnotic and pristine and prescient.

There was some Donna Summer music I never cared for. “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” is too gay for me and I am gay. Barbra Streisand will not appear on my iPod unless it’s “Barbra Streisand” by Duck Sauce. Summer’s wailing vocals and convincing performance can pull off “MacArthur Park” but that song is still laughable. I’m sure that cake in the rain is a symbol but it’s too stupid to ponder. I just assume the song is either by drugs or about drugs. “Last Dance” is well constructed and undeniably catchy but it’s cliché now. It’s every wedding you’ve ever been to. I don’t want to play this at our reception. If people really want to hear it, fine; but you’ll hear it as the first song of the evening.

Songs like “Last Dance” sound cliché until you realize, “But it was new then.” It’s a little like Casablanca where you’ve heard “Here’s looking at you, kid” so often that you groan when Humphrey Bogart says it until you realize this was the first time anyone had heard it. I think that’s part of Donna Summer’s legacy. She had been around for so long and her songs were such a part of the radio and dance floor that maybe I never really looked it her.

There have been so many disco divas since Donna Summer’s heyday that they all owe her something. Summer was such a trailblazer that without her work in dance music, I don’t know what Madonna would sound like today, let alone God knows how many other dance artists. And I think Madonna knows that since she opened the Confessions Tour with a brilliant medley of her own “Future Lovers” and “I Feel Love.”

Summer had an astounding run of hits in the late ‘70s and in 1979, her hits were overlapping each other on the chart to the point where she had more than one hit in the top 10 at once, which is really hard to do. The mainstream hits petered out after that but she never stopped having club hits. Between 2008 and 2010, she had four number 1 hits on the dance chart to add to her total. I think that’s astounding for someone who had been around since the ‘70s to get strong club play in a genre that is constantly moving on to the next new thing. It seems like the clubs never forgot Donna Summer.

People sneered about disco in the early ‘80s and it’s true that while there was a lot of crap in that genre, there was plenty of good disco like Summer and the Bee Gees. I never thought disco died. It was underground for awhile but you can hear echoes of it in every hit in the clubs. It’s funny that some people saw disco as disposable and forgettable but nobody ever forgot songs like “Last Dance” or “Staying Alive.”

People still sneer at dance music and yes, there is a lot of terrible dance music out there and yes, if you read the lyrics on paper, they are often nothing profound. But I find that dance music at its best — “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode or “I’m Addicted” by Madonna or “Dancing on My Own” by Robyn or “We Found Love” by Rihanna — has a quality that’s almost hymn-like, with an uplift that’s almost spiritual. If you can make music to get people who don’t even speak the same language to shake their collective ass on the dance floor, that’s no small accomplishment. It’s close to profound.