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  • Donna Summer died yesterday

    RIP

    Most of you probably don't know her, but if you were a teenager in the late 70'es, early 80'es you certainly know this (and many other) :



    US singer Donna Summer, famous for disco hits including I Feel Love and Love To Love You Baby, dies at the age of 63.


    Donna Summer, queen of disco, dies at 63

    US singer Donna Summer, famous for disco classics including I Feel Love and Love To Love You Baby, has died at the age of 63.

    Summer was one of disco's biggest stars and also had a huge influence on the synth pop and dance music scenes.

    Her family said they were "at peace celebrating her extraordinary life and her continued legacy".

    Stars including Kylie Minogue, Sir Elton John and Mary J Blige have paid tribute.

    R&B singer Blige said on Twitter that Summer was "truly a game changer", while producer Quincy Jones said her voice "was the heartbeat and soundtrack of a decade".
    Donna Summer Summer's is known for the global hit I Feel Love

    Minogue described her as "one of my earliest musical inspirations", while Dionne Warwick said she was sad to lose a great performer and "dear friend".

    Summer, who was reported to have had cancer, had been living in Florida with her husband Bruce Sudano.

    A statement from her family said: "Early this morning, we lost Donna Summer Sudano, a woman of many gifts, the greatest being her faith.

    "While we grieve her passing, we are at peace celebrating her extraordinary life and her continued legacy. Words truly can't express how much we appreciate your prayers and love for our family at this sensitive time."

    Elton John said Summer was more than the "queen of disco", adding: "Her records sound as good today as they ever did.

    "That she has never been inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame is a total disgrace, especially when I see the second-rate talent that has been inducted."

    Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes said: "It's extremely rare that you hear one song that completely changes the way you perceive music. I Feel Love achieved that."

    Singer Marc Almond recalled how Summer's work with Italian synthesiser pioneer Giorgio Moroder had "changed the face of music and changed my life".
    Donna Summer on American Idol Summer performed on American Idol in 2008

    "I Feel Love was a truly original and barrier breaking record, and Now I Need You and Working The Midnight Shift are simply some of the best euphoric electronic tracks ever," he said.

    BBC Radio 2 presenter Paul Gambaccini said I Feel Love was "one of the key records in the history of electronic dance music and will always be recognised as such".

    Summer grew up in Boston and started singing in her church's gospel choir. Her stage career began in musicals, prompting a move to Germany where she appeared in Hair and Porgy and Bess.

    But it was her work with the Moroder that led to her pop breakthrough with Love To Love You Baby in 1975 - the first of 29 UK top 40 singles.

    Her expressive vocal style, coupled with Moroder's pulsating rhythms, made the song a big club and chart hit - as well as leading it to be banned by several radio stations for its suggestive overtones.
    Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer Giorgio Moroder (right) produced some of Summer's biggest hits

    Between 1978-80, her career hit its commercial peak with a string of US hit singles including Last Dance, MacArthur Park, Bad Girls and Hot Stuff.

    She won five Grammy Awards and had a further 12 nominations, becoming the first black artist to win a Grammy in a rock category - taking best rock vocal performance for Hot Stuff in 1979.

    Her influence stretched across musical boundaries, with Madonna, Whitney Houston and David Guetta among the artists who sampled her, while Bruce Springsteen wrote songs for her.

    Producer Pete Waterman, who worked with the singer on tracks including This Time I Know It's for Real in the 1980s, told BBC News: "She was the icing on the cake. We were at the top of our game when we worked with her. She was just fantastic.

    "Donna was unique," he added. "Donna did things Donna's way. One of the first things she said to me was, when you work with me, you work on Donna time… She wasn't a diva, she was inspirational. Her talent came from God, she knew she couldn't just turn it on."
    With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

    Steven Weinberg

  • #2
    What did she kill herself? Another black on black crime that Al Sharpton won't say anything about.

    Comment


    • #3
      She's famous for saying AIDS was God's punishment for gays.

      Now she's taken early by cancer.

      No further comments.
      "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
      Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

      Comment


      • #4
        RIP Donna Summer – the accidental gay icon

        Unlike modern stars, Summer never courted a gay audience but her transcendental disco was perfectly in tune with gay culture

        Paul Flynn
        guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 May 2012 06.26 EDT


        Donna Summer: 'Something about the music she fashioned during disco's supremacy touched a mass gay chord at gut level.' Photograph: Richard E Aaron/ Redferns
        Earlier this year rumours began to spread that Donna Summer was in negotiation to take the Sunday headlining spot at the summer music festival, Lovebox. The potential signing was symbolic. Sunday at Lovebox is "gay day". Donna Summer's relationship with her fulsome gay fan-base had been fractious ever since there had been rumours of ill-advised comments about the Aids crisis – comments, it should be said, that she denied ever having made.

        In 2012, some 30 years later, the time seemed right for any forgiving or forgetting between the two. The possibility of her doing it to a cherry-picked soundtrack of her unimpeachable back catalogue in an east London park, in front of 10,000+ giddy local homosexuals still in thrall to her talent (if not necessarily her PR technique) felt like redemption.

        Like her pop stardom, Summer's early gay iconography was not something she hankered after. It was something she was presented with. She didn't craft her ripe talent to a specific audience. It found her on account of it. In a post-Madonna pop universe it seems almost unthinkable that such a thing could happen, but Donna Summer was an accidental icon.

        Something about the music she fashioned during disco's supremacy – its poise, gravity and open sex content – touched a mass gay chord at gut level. When Diana Ross sang "I'm Coming Out" or "I Want Muscles" she did it with a sleek wink. She was sensationally market savvy. When Grace Jones recorded an album of growling show tunes to a disco score, its gay intent could not have been more succinct. When Donna Summer breathily intoned her climactic songbook, however, she did it under the tutorship of a hot-blooded heterosexual producer and his faithfully married lyricist in a sterile Munich hit factory. Neither Summer nor Giorgio Moroder nor Pete Belotte were children of the night. They were simply blessed with a divine ability to intuit how 3am under a mirror-ball in a Metropolitan gay nightclub ought to sound, at its most sublime and transcendental. I Feel Love is still it.

        Bono, Quincy Jones, Macy Gray and Roberta Flack pay tribute to disco queen Donna Summer Link to this video Little touches that traced Summer's career breakout – Beverley's campy, chiffon singalong to Love to Love You Baby in Abigail's Party, the crisp guitar run of Hot Stuff that seemed to ridicule traditional rock posturing, the propulsive refrain "Toot, toot, beep, beep" – gave her a strange knowing, all the more poignant for not being designed for the gay market it touched hardest.

        In the current pop climate, accessing a gay fanbase is seen as the first notch on the bedpost of future success. Just as junior hairdressers were back in Donna Summer's imperial heyday, aspiring pop singers are now routinely instructed by their handlers that this isn't the business for them if they have a problem with gay people. All the finest female solo artists of the last decade have been handed a copy of Grace Jones' One Man Show and the mesmerising 80s Vogue documentary Paris Is Burning on their first day at diva school, both stone-cold gay classics.

        Donna's most obvious modern emotional successor Beyoncé – a beautiful, shy southern church girl with an uncanny ability to follow the rhythm of music and turn it into an approximation of pure sex – had to work hard to earn her righteous gay audience, including a spell under a drag-ish alter ego Sasha Fierce and a superb tribute to Summer herself, segueing one of her first hits Naughty Girl into Love to Love You Baby.

        The great irony of Donna Summer's career is that when she left Casablanca records, where she had fashioned peerless gay disco music with the assistance of straight men, she was signed by the most ostentatious gay man in showbusiness, David Geffen. Under this most secular of patrons she returned her most spiritual work. It is almost impossible not to look back at Donna's incredible commercial and creative peaks as a motivational speech in how to do everything the wrong way round. Yet in this last accidental icon and her topsy turvy career something alchemical happened.

        Gay men adored her. We continue to. Any potentially received betrayal that had occurred during her aggressive early 80s "god period" was felt only harder because we cared. Perhaps one aspect of her legacy, quite aside from the sensational music she made, will be this. Understanding gay culture, at its trashiest and most moving, is now required cultural reading for any pop performer with a keen eye on longevity. If it takes a fancy to you, the gay circuit will reward you again and again. None of these pre-fame lessons were at Summer's disposal. It was the 70s, a time before huge attitudinal shifts in racism, sexism and homophobia. Some little part of the latter probably happened because of her unfortunate fall from the pedestal of gay idolatry. In some peculiarly moving way she actually opened a door. Rest in peace.

        • Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree
        Paul Flynn: Unlike modern stars, Summer never courted a gay audience but her transcendental disco was perfectly in tune with gay culture
        No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.

        Comment


        • #5
          Asher - It is a rumor started in 1983. Donna Summer has repeatedly denied ever making any such statement and did a benefit concert for The Gay Men's Health Crisis for AIDS victims that raised over $400,000.

          Don't they teach gay history in Calgary?
          There's nothing wrong with the dream, my friend, the problem lies with the dreamer.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Uncle Sparky View Post
            Asher - It is a rumor started in 1983. Donna Summer has repeatedly denied ever making any such statement and did a benefit concert for The Gay Men's Health Crisis for AIDS victims that raised over $400,000.

            Don't they teach gay history in Calgary?
            They teach critical thought.

            She "allegedly" said it in 1983, and after gay men stopped buying her records she started denying ever saying it in 1989. And she was a born-again Christian.
            "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
            Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

            Comment


            • #7
              More like overly critical thought.
              Apolyton's Grim Reaper 2008, 2010 & 2011
              RIP lest we forget... SG (2) and LaFayette -- Civ2 Succession Games Brothers-in-Arms

              Comment


              • #8
                Can anyone explain to me the difference between 'critical thought' and 'thought'? Thank you in advance.

                Comment


                • #9
                  I also wanted to share something I saw recently, that I thought was fairly profound:

                  F.R.I.E.N.D.S: (F)ight for you. (R)espect you. (I)nvolve you. (E)ncourage you. (N)eed you. (D)eserve you. (S)ave you

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Wiglaf View Post
                    Can anyone explain to me the difference between 'critical thought' and 'thought'? Thank you in advance.
                    It means that you don't care about evidence/facts when you decide what's the real truth
                    With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

                    Steven Weinberg

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      she had a quite good voice

                      I need a foot massage

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Asher hates on non-rock music. What else is new?
                        "Flutie was better than Kelly, Elway, Esiason and Cunningham." - Ben Kenobi
                        "I have nothing against Wilson, but he's nowhere near the same calibre of QB as Flutie. Flutie threw for 5k+ yards in the CFL." -Ben Kenobi

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I don't recall saying anything about music in this thread.

                          Alby likes gay anthems and disco. What else is new?
                          "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
                          Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Asher View Post
                            Alby likes gay anthems and disco. What else is new?
                            Good music is good music.
                            "Flutie was better than Kelly, Elway, Esiason and Cunningham." - Ben Kenobi
                            "I have nothing against Wilson, but he's nowhere near the same calibre of QB as Flutie. Flutie threw for 5k+ yards in the CFL." -Ben Kenobi

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Please tell me more about the possibility that a now-deceased artist representing an out-of-fashion musical style from the seventies may, according to rumor, have said something stupid about gay people around the time I was born. The idea intrigues me.
                              1011 1100
                              Pyrebound--a free online serial fantasy novel

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