Rolling Stone VS. Donna Summer: A Critical Reappraisal

[markydefad]

Since HRH (as Jeff refers to her) Donna made her debut on this week's Disco Compilation Consensus chart for 10/4/75 and since I recently purchased the new Rolling Stone Album Guide and read HRH's new critical reavaluation, I thought I'd share with y'all.

I have 3 volumes of Rolling Stone Album (the first was "Record") Guides from 1979, 1992 and the new one from 2004.

I'm gonna type the RS critical evaluations of Miss Summer from those three volumes and then show her discography ratings as they have changed over the years.

Needless to say, Donna's critical stock has risen considerably since the first collection was published in 1979.

1979:

"Produced by Pete Bellotte in Munich, Donna Summer's first album consists of the full sixteen-minute discoid moans and sighs of her hit title song and a few limp soul numbers. Interestingly, only "Love To Love You Baby" is actually disco, serving as a novelty dance number. But its too slow for dancing and too long for the recorded multiple orgasms not to become self-parodying.

A Love Trilogy formularizes Summer's silky pliancy into a "mood" album, but its feeble pumping is rather boring beside Four Seasons Of Love, which is more spirited because Bellotte and his Munich Machine have finally worked out their oily European variant of the disco genre.

I Remember Yesterday proves a complete surprise. Here, Summer presents herself as a pleasantly competent soul singer; the randy Siamese posing of her earlier records disappears before her affectionate replays of Ronettes, Supremes and ballad styles, concluding with a Kraftwerk-derived dance tune, "I Feel Love." Once Upon a Time presents her as Cinderella, a ridulously gauzy move that almost works. The live album, despite containing a major hit in "MacArthur Park" (no less), is dismal. (BT= ??)

1992:

"Love To Love You Baby" sounds like a pure novelty record at first: a sultry, disembodied woman's voice shudders and sighs in the throes of passion, while a fluid dance groove provides water-bed support. With its seamless orchestration and brazen sensuality, however, this 1975 Top Ten hit heralded the dawn of disco. And from such humble beginnings sprang Donna Summer, who went on to rule this oft-maligned musical province. A Boston-born singer, who'd performed in European productions of Hair and Godspell, Summer met up with producer Giorgio Morodor in Germany. Moroder and songwriting partner Pete Bellotte crafted a sleek, propulsive orchestrated backdrop-- Eurodisco-- for Summer's heart-piercing (and occasionally ear-piercing) vocal workouts. The full-lengthy album version of "Love to Love You Baby," more than fifteen minutes of it, is a hugely influential piece of work. Moroder incorporates the mix-moves of a club DJ into a record; over a stalwart bass line, Summer's moans float endlessly around symphonic variations and a startling , Kraftwerk-style electronic intrusion.

A series of failed quasi-autobiographical concept albums followed--Eurodisco is big on CONCEPTS-- :P
A Love Trilogy, Four Seasons of Love & I Remember Yesterday. That last album spawned a masterfully synthesized Top Ten hit, "I Feel Love," in 1977. Once Upon a Time is a slightly more successful opus, while Summer's studio-bound sound falls predictably flat on Live and More. And then Donna Summer came into her own. On Bad Girls, the addition of soaring lead guitar lines and tighter, earthier songwriting took everybody--especially dance fans--by surprise. "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff" took this disco-rock fusion to the top of the pop charts, while slow-dancers like "Dim All the Lights" tapped into Summer's sweet side. Her On the Radio--Greatest Hits Volume I & II belongs on your shelf, right next to Chic's greatest hits. Even if you don't dance: disco doesn't get any more listenable than this.

The Wanderer continues, and deepens, the rock influence while hueing to a still-danceable Eurobeat. Quincy Jones produced the mega-ambitious Donna Summer for the new Geffen label; to put it mildly, not everything works. There is a lot to choose from: a Bruce Springsteen cover ("Protection"), a bona-fide hit single ("Love Is In Control [Finger on the Trigger]"), a new-age choral nightmare epic ("State of Independence"). She Works Hard For The Money serves up another winning, seemingly effortless vocal hook (the hit title track), amid plently of pleasantly unambitious tunes. Summer hit a rough patch after that; even Stock-Aitken-Waterman's machine -tooled dance fluff (on Another Place and Time) can't seem to get her motivated again. Mistaken Identity is not quite a full-fledged comeback, but it's quite encouraging. In between the misguided opener ("Get Ethnic") and the strained closer ("Let There Be Peace") lies striking evidence of Summer's enduring talent. Something about her voice hits home, whether she's aiming for the heart ("Work That Magic"), the soul ("Say a Little Prayer") or the feet ("Fred Astaire")." (MC =Mark Coleman)

2004:

"When Donna Summer broke her first hit, little more than whispers and moans over a tepid eurodisco beat, her career didn't seem to promise more than another Andrea True. That the best song on her second album was written by Barry Manilow wasn't very promising, either. But two things changed all that: Producer Giorgio Moroder figured out how to deploy the string synth, and Summer took charge of her material.

Turns out that she could sing, belt even. Turns out that she liked rock & roll as much as disco. Turns out that she discovered that niche at the crosshairs of rock, soul, dance, and showbizz pop that Madonna exploited so successfully a decade later.

Summer was born in Boston but went to Europe to sing onstage in productions of Hair and Godspell. There she hooked up with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, who were cranking out disco fluff as the Munich Machine, and they had a hit with "Love to Love You Baby." Summer became an instant disco icon, and her early records exploited that. The first two albums were more Moroder/Bellotte than Summer, with side-long disco suites on the first side, and filler on the second. Indeed, one of the things that we notice now is that all of Summer's albums were conceived as LP sides, usually laid out in a continuous mix, which makes for some inconsistencies as the sides were piled up on CDs. Four Seasons of Love, a cycle of disco songs for each season, is one of the few albums that benefit from being heard whole; the transitional I Remember Yesterday, with its strong first side and filler plus hit on the second, is less consistent. But two songs there portended where Summer was going: "Love's Unkind" :D was updated girl-group rock, while "I Feel Love ," her second big hit, was so propulsive that Brian Eno called it "the future of music."

Summer's next album, Once Upon A Time, was an ambitious double-LP retelling of the Cinderella story, a suite of songs connected by a relentless disco beat. It was a lot to swallow at the time, but it contains some of her strongest work, especially Act One with "Fairy Tale High" :D and "Say Something Nice." This was an intensive period for Summer, with four double-LPs in a two-year stretch from 1977 to 1979. Bad Girls was the next new studio set, another big advance in songcraft and a broadening of her music: more rock, more soul, one side of ballads, and hits as compelling as 'Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," and "Sunset People." The other two doubles were the improbable Live and More and the inevitable On The Radio. The much-panned live album actually sounds remarkably fresh now, the sound clear, the energy palpable. Perhaps the reason for the pans was the side-long "MacArthur Park Suite," moved from the Live and More CD to The Dance Collection, but even though it's built around one of rock's all-time worst songs, the extended music this is some of Moroder's most elegant disco, and there's nothing wrong with two interpolated Summer songs. As for On the Radio, it not only sums up Summer's oeuvre to date, half of it was new to LP, coming from singles and soundtracks.

Summer's discography falls apart after 1980: She divorced, changed labels and producers several times, remarried, proclaimed herself born-again, moved to Nashville. Not much of her post-1980 work is in print. (Hard to say why; maybe God is punishing her for blaspheming her gay fans). :P Still, the Michael Omartian-produced She Works Hard for the Money is one of the best things she's ever done.
Another Place and Time, produced by Bananarama braintrust Stock-Aitken-Waterman, is more rigid rhythmically, but she's more than ever a skilled, powerful singer. This period is chronicled, for better or worse, on the second disc of The Donna Summer Anthology. Since then, we have only the second coming of Love and More-- if tragedy returns as farce, perhaps ambition returns as conceit. Then there are the comps: the first disc of Anthology ends with "Bad Girls," a fine selection from the rising slope of her career. Endless Summer compresses Anthology's two discs down to one, including two new cuts not likely to stand the test to time.

The Millennium Collection shows only that less is less: 11 cuts, 51 minutes, a bare canonical minimum. The Journey is almost a carbon copy, with two (not bad) new songs added, but both comps thin out after the 1980s output. The Millennium Collection is more canonical, using longer mixes to stretch its not quite a dozen songs to nearly an hour. But the most effective use of her long dance mixes is on the extra disc of Bad Girls (Deluxe Edition).TH= Tom Hull)
__________________________________________________ ___

Rolling Stone Ratings Guide:

***** (5) = INDESPENSIBLE (A record that must be included in any comprehensive collection.)

**** (4) = EXCELLENT (A recod of substantial merit, though flawed in some essential way).

*** (3) = GOOD (A record of average worth, but one that might possess considerable appeal for fans of a particular style).

** (2) = Mediocre (Records that are artistically insubstantial, though not truly wretched)

* (1) = POOR (Records in which even the technical competence is at question or which are remarkably ill-conceived).

0 (0) - WORTHLESS (Records that need never (or should never ) have been created: reserved for the most bathetic bathwater).

__________________________________________________ ___

Donna's Discography (as rated by Rolling Stone)

LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY (1975)
1979 RSRG: *
1992 RSAG: ***1/2
2004 RSAG: ***

A LOVE TRILOGY (1976)
1979: *
1992: **
2004: ***

FOUR SEASONS OF LOVE (1976)
1979: *
1992: **
2004:***1/2

I REMEMBER YESTERDAY (1977)
1979: **
1992: ***
2004: NOT LISTED

ONCE UPON A TIME(1977)
1979: **
1992: ***
2004: ***1/2

LIVE AND MORE (1978.)
1979: *
1992: **
2004: ***1/2

BAD GIRLS (1979)
1979: N/A
1992: ****
2004: ****

ON THE RADIO (1979)
1979: N/A
1992: *****
2004: ****

THE WANDERER (1980)
1992: ****
2004: NOT LISTED

DONNA SUMMER (1982)
1992: ***
2004: NOT LISTED

SHE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY (1983)
1992: ***1/2
2004: ****

CATS WITHOUT CLAWS (1985)
1992: **

THE SUMMER COLLECTION (1985)
1992: ***

ALL SYSTEMS GO (1987)
1992: **

THE DANCE COLLECTION (1987)
1992: ***
2004: ***1/2

ANOTHER PLACE AND TIME (1989)
1992: **1/2
2004: ***

MISTAKEN IDENTITY (1991)
1992: ***

DONNA SUMMER ANTHOLOGY (1993)
2004: ****

ENDLESS SUMMER (1995)
2004: ****

VHI PRESENTS: LIVE AND MORE ENCORE! (1999)
2004: **1/2

BEST OF DONNA SUMMER: THE MILLENNIUM COLLECTION (2003)
2004: ****

BAD GIRLS [DELUXE EDITION] (2003)
2004: *****

THE JOURNEY: THE VERY BEST OF DONNA SUMMER (2003)
2004: ****

__________________________________________________ __

What I found interesting is the critical upgrading of the early LPs from POOR to GOOD/GOOD+ and especially the "Live & More" LP (always bad-mouthed) going from POOR to GOOD+ in the 2004 edition.

I think we see what's stood the test of time.

And your faves? Hmmmm........

[neonlights]

funny how albums can go from crap to classic in the span of twenty years :P .. I'm glad to see Donna and Chic getting their due (finally).. I wonder how other disco albums/artists would fare under the same comparison.. Just goes to show that sometimes snobby critics wouldn't know a good thing if it kicked them in the ass..

Anyways my faves would be A Love Trilogy, Four Seasons Of Love, Bad Girls, The Wanderer, All Systems Go, Another Place And Time and (surprise) Mistaken Identity

I'm not so sure She Works Hard For The Money deserves the Four stars.. good song, but a mostly weak LP IMO :-?

[Salsoul1975]

You often have to wonder if the change in attitude by critics towards disco is due to the fact that today's music has deviated from melody and hooks and harmonies and whatnot; in layman's terms: the elements that constitute music. Rock critic's darlings have either died off or aged considerably though still perfomring. They no longer have the influence towards popular music as a whole as they had in the '70s heyday. This applies to both the critics and the artists.

Disco has withstood the test of time because it was a universal genre and had little to no use for pretension. The rock music that the critics masturbated with more than 30 years ago has metamorphosized into loud, screeching, blistering junk with no substance. It seems their current re-thinking of disco is just as well; realizing that the public's undying appetite for disco outlived any of their own predictions.

[markydefad]

I'm still waiting for A Love Trilogy to get its due respect. This is a wonderful LP with all the songs worth mentioning.

1 Try Me, I Know We Can Make It (Bellotte, Moroder, Summer) 17:57
2 Intro: Prelude to Love (Bellotte, Moroder, Summe) 1:06
3 Could It Be Magic (Anderson, Manilow) 5:15
4 Wasted (Bellotte, Moroder ) 5:09
5 Come With Me (Bellotte, Moroder) 4:22

"Try Me, I Know We Can Make It" was the major club record here, BUT "Could It Be Magic," Wasted" & especially "Come With Me" are all excellent. :D :D :D


Four Seasons of Love, I Remember Yesterday, & Once Upon a Time all seem to have found their stature upgraded as the years have passed, but A Love Trilogy is always given short-shrift, IMHO. :-?

I still find the B-side of Love To Love You Baby rather weak, but I'm gonna play it repeatedly and see if it doesn't catch my attention more than it has in the past. AMG gives this b-side some glowing praise in thier review.

[Salsoul1975]

Marky,

I played A Love Trilogy last week, and I agree with you 100%. This is one of Miss Love-To-Love-You's best albums and consistent throughout. "Wasted" is probably my favorite song on the album. Her re-working of "Could It Be Magic" was awesome. All of the songs are excellent, and it is an upbeat album.

[DISCODISK]

its a bit like that here too MARKY all those wonderful songs baltimore- nina simone,whats going on -marvin gaye,etc thats only come with time.
the rock press hated disco when they reviewed the singles [the token few each week] they slated em,silver convention,baccara in particular had a rough ride
i used to read em for a laugh of couse i never purchased them i just read em in the shop and tossed em back
the one that stands out in my mind though is a mid 70s review of a stylistics record it simply said ..
NO BOLLOCKS STRIKES AGAIN!!!! :lol:

[Salsoul1975]

Marky,

I think the reason why the B-side of the Love To Love You Baby doesn't get a lot of respect is because it is not in the same vein as Side A. "Need-A-Man-Blues" is the only disco song on that side; the others are a cornucopia of country/western, A/C, and Spector-esque '60s-flavored pop. It was also a conceptual side, with each song about loneliness and/or despair. Ironically, it might have been a precursor to what she did on Bad Girls, with the third side consisting of a country/western tune ("On My Honor") and a few A/C songs ("There Will Always Be A You", "All Through The Night"). The closer on Side 3, the power ballad "My Baby Understands", is one of the strongest songs on that album.

[Nano]

Good work, Marky. However, you have to take into account that RS changed reviewers and scribes many times in the last 30 years.
Also, these guys that reappraise La Donna are the same guys that give 3 stars to N'Sync and Britney CDs... :roll:
RS isn't what it used to be. A couple of years ago, Jann Wenner himself came to visit the offices of the magazine in Buenos Aires (yes... we have a local version). After looking at past issues and the work done, his first question was: "how come you never put Britney Spears on the cover?"
OOOUCHHH!!! :o

[ol'skinflint]

Originally Posted by neonlights

funny how albums can go from crap to classic in the span of twenty years :P .. I'm glad to see Donna and Chic getting their due (finally).. I wonder how other disco albums/artists would fare under the same comparison.. Just goes to show that sometimes snobby critics wouldn't know a good thing if it kicked them in the ass..

Anyways my faves would be A Love Trilogy, Four Seasons Of Love, Bad Girls, The Wanderer, All Systems Go, Another Place And Time and (surprise) Mistaken Identity

I'm not so sure She Works Hard For The Money deserves the Four stars.. good song, but a mostly weak LP IMO :-?

From what I've observed personally, most often when critics call certain music crappy when it's released and then change their minds years later and praise it, it's because it was unexpectedly commercially successful. That's probably partially true in Donna Summer's case too, but they (critics not only of Summer's work but disco in general) simply can NOT deny Summer and disco's longlasting popularity. Touring disco artists still draw crowds, the music still ignites crowds in clubs, disco television shows are quite popular, and several artists have sampled and covered Donna Summer's songs. And I hear "We Are Family" as often today as when it was released. Certain styles of music have periods of being popular and unpopular, but to me, good music remains so regardless of how much time passes, and I couldn't care less what critics consider hip or square. My only frustration with disco is that so much of it remains unavailable or hard to find. I'm sooooooooooooooooo glad I kept most of my records.

[Salsoul Nugget]

Great work - interesting stuff. I think maybe a lot has to do with people today giving disco a little more credit than it was getting at the time and shortly after it's peak.

I've never really listened to her early albums in their entirely - but probably should - so I can only really comment on the SAW album "Another Place and Time" which was actually pretty good. "Loves about to change" is one of the most uplifting songs I've ever known.

[STEPHEN L FREEMAN]

Originally Posted by markydefad

Not much of her post-1980 work is in print. (Hard to say why; maybe God is punishing her for blaspheming her gay fans). :P

The fact that this long-ago debunked rumour is incorporated into a review, as late as 2004, shows that the "critic" didn't do their homework. Either get the facts right, or shut up.

As for the "Love To Love You" LP... Remember that the only complete version of the b-side, can be found on the German/Atlantic Records pressing. Originally, it's a bit more diverse than it sounded, after being re-vamped. And shows-off Donna's, pre-Disco, pop-music side.

Personally, I LOVE every track on the b-side of the "Try Me..." L.P.

[Westwood]

Hey guys, this thread makes for a very interesting discussion, in case you didn't have it before.
I personally cannot stand Rolling Stones' pretentiousness.
I find it kinda pathetic and annoying that they seem to have this "power" to be held as somewhat "the" critical appraisal that counts in the entertainment business. How did that happen?
The biggest question that seems to exist is: why is rock (rock, indie etc) more important/better/serious than pop/disco and other more pleasing sounds??????? This has ALWAYS bothered me so much.
This always comes up when you want to tell someone that you love disco, because all the studid comments arise, even if you're a newbie to disco and you're listening to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive or whatever the "in" (cough) crowd consider to be disco's worst and only output, or you're very knowledgeable in disco, you get the same stupid response.
It's almost like an undying rumour like the ones that we wish would put to rest about DS, disco always gets bashed.
Isn't there a more pop-friendly music magazine that is highly regarded?
The only one I can maybe think of, just because Neil Tennant used to work there, is Smash Hits, however, not being in the UK and too young when it was in press (I think) I never bought it, and seeing some covers here and there, I hardly think it can be considered critical.
UK's NME is also another crappy paper, with snobs galore criticising everyone as it pleases them, and occasionally being total hypocrits when it's convenient to them.

Were most music magazines back then also this unfavorable to Donna Summer's work?
Because I think that in a way, while her and disco's work might have been re-evaluated over time, some may be influenced by the fact that her records were highly influentual indeed, but the newer reviews might be less objective because of that? I would be interested if those who gave her one star back then have changed their mind (that is if they can get over themselves).
I mean, we know that many things change as they are propagated by word of mouth, mistold stories, urban legends, some inaccurate facts that are propagated because they are told by someone or something, or influencial (movies etc, or period movies).
It would be nice to get a comprehensive objective point of view on her discography. Rolling Stone's can't be, I mean, there is way too much difference between those appraisals to be worth anything.