Disco Future / Disco Past

I’ve been on a big Donna Summer kick lately, paying harder atten­tion to over­looked gems stuck in the middle of her ‘clas­sic’ albums. There was a time in musical history where the vanguard was the main­stream, where the biggest star was also part of the biggest paradigm shift in popu­lar music, and the story was writ­ten by Summer and Moroder.

It of course began with “I Feel Love”, but there are a number of magni­fi­cent tracks from the same era that are formed with the basic recipe from that song. The recipe, of course, is a hypnotic, robotic, yet warm and organic compu­ter­ized dance beat. Surely Moroder felt it was incom­plete, as it was very much not digital. It is a freak of nature, some­thing both arti­fi­cial yet very unique, not exactly the same twice.

Two of her songs have taken on a special mean­ing for me lately, because of their subject matter:

“Working the Midnight Shift” is one of those electro-disco master­pieces that holds its own against the 30 years of music that came after. I’ve been work­ing a late night temp job lately, so it has been the abso­lute jam that keeps me sane through these tougher times. It seems to be the first of what was several of her songs that feature the perspect­ive of work­ing women in ardu­ous or thank­less situations.

“I’m work­ing the midnight shift for that extra little some­thing, the things that are out of reach, I need so bad…”

• Donna Summer — Working The Midnight Shift (1977)

God damn! Her voice, her inflec­tion, the robotic drum machine, the way the song just effort­lessly glides from start to finish. It is one of several Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder/Pete Bellotte masterpieces.

“Can’t Get to Sleep At Night” has also been on heavy rota­tion, because I suffer from pretty bad insom­nia. It’s not as “compu­ter­ized” as “Working the Midnight Shift”, simply because the produc­tion value had gotten much more slick as far as the synthes­izers go, but it’s still fantastic.

• Donna Summer — Can’t Get To Sleep At Night (1979)

And, of course, there is “Our Love”, a song that almost eclipses “I Feel Love” or any other song Donna sang that had the word love in it. To me, it is “I Feel Love II” — it is no less a predictor of future genres than its ante­cedent. Not only is that proven true by New Order’s “Blue Monday”, a song that notori­ously took its sequen­cing pattern from “Our Love”, but the second half of the song simply predicts the future in a way few pop songs ever have.

• Donna Summer — Our Love (1979)

I still lose a bit of my breath once “Our Love” hits 4:20 — it is an abso­lute revel­a­tion of music. It never ceases to floor me; Donna Summer never ceases to floor me. Music like that won’t be made again.