It was a good thing that disco came along when it did for Adrian, who transformed herself (with the support of a whole team of industrial experts) into a sexy, siren-voiced, and consistent persona during a time of extemporaneousness and hedonism. The packaging was perfect, and the difference was that the talent was pure. As with Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Diana Ross, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, and Rosemary Clooney, Donna's music of her heyday has become timeless and classic. We don't classify the songs now as dated or relics. Instead, we fondly listen like they are an old friend come home to stay for a while. 

Some songs, like Love To Love You Baby, Last Dance and She Works Hard For The Money, have enjoyed instant standard positions in musical history. 

It's often been said that Donna Summer's music, co-penned by at times and produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, was ahead of its time and therefore led to the denouement of her success after the disco ball stopped turning. Although it's undeniable that she's continued to perform, write, sing, and record through today, and has unarguably got the talent to cross over to any medium that she desires, it is also without question that the media circus and general popular appeal of the music waned through much of the 80s and nearly disappeared in the 90s. Was it due to the breakup of the classic trio of Summer/Moroder/Bellotte? Or was it the marketing allure of disco that drew us to the genre, and we just happened to find its defining voice in Donna Summer. That time gone, is the magnetism, too? Was there something special about the phenomenon Adrian Gaines, or was it just good timing?

I dug out my full catalog of Donna Summer records. (OK, I still can't get used to saying CDs.) I listened to them again purposefully to find out what really was ahead of its time, and what was simply a product of its time. 

There's a difference. What was ahead of its time paved the way for future musical styles and artist success...truly pioneering stuff. What was a product of its time and what was a jumping on the bandwagon of current trends in hopes of a chart-maker.

Unarguably ahead of its time, "I Feel Love" persists as one of the most memorable hits that the Summer/Moroder/Bellotte team produced in the '70s. For its artistic merit as well as its popularity, the song has remained in the "Top 100..." you name it list for 27 years. The techno-beat, completely synthetic instrumentals, fevered pitch, impossibly high, on-pitch and sustained falsetto, and hypnotic hooks were unheard of before the "I Remember Yesterday" album's last song on side 2. 

Originally released as the B Side to the fantastic "Can't We Just Sit Down (And Talk it Over)," which was the second ballad entry to the world of singles that Donna released ("Winter Melody" being the first), and coincidentally my all time favorite Donna song, "Sit Down" showcases an amazing range both vocally and emotionally. Powerful trademark notes finish out Tony Macauley's lush tune, but the public wasn't finished with it until they sat down and turned the record over to play "I Feel." 

Casablanca got smart and released future versions with "I Feel Love" on the A Side. And the sales took off. By 1980, Blondie had parodied the song with "Heart of Glass," cruelly similar to Weird Al Yankovic's parodies. Probably designed to be a punk-rock infused disco buster, "Glass" turned out to be a disco classic sensation, still played on MusicChoice's Classic Disco channel, and the song that launched Blondie's and Deborah Harry's careers into orbit. 

		"I Feel Love" has held up over the years under scrutiny and was re-recorded by Donna Summer in 1995 with Mixes by Rollo and Sister Bliss and Master At Work, released as a single, and accompanied by a non-Donna video that features a female security guard watching mostly naked men shower, touch themselves (discreetly of course), and tug at their ties in steamy black and white scenes through her video security system.. The security task gets to be too much to handle, so eventually our heroine has to join in.

Now that's just the kind of friskiness that accompanied our dear Donna when she returned home from Europe, triumphant with "Love to Love You, Baby" solidly on the charts (but I'll get to that). I can remember riding my 10-speed at age 15 and passing a group of young children playing in a front yard, "I feel love..." blaring from their portable radio. Now that's truly ageless and timeless appeal. And Donna is no stranger to young audiences, as she still delivers for them today, with "The Power of One," from Pokemon, and "Dream-a-lot's Theme (I Will Live For Love)" from a musical that she wrote for children, as examples.

Of less groundbreaking impact, are the covers, like "Could It Be Magic," "MacArthur Park," "Lush Life," "Someday" (which may be the most often forgotten Donna Summer recording that I've ever seen-and undeservedly so), and "Con Te Partiro." Of these, MacArthur Park is a good one to dissect. Strings of three or four songs in a row were nothing new to the disco dance floor or the DJ's record collection. A conscious effort had been made by many record companies once they realized that disco records were going to sell tremendously without radio air play to maximize a rare opportunity that they had stumbled upon. 

Instead of the rote three-minute radio format that allowed breaks for advertising, artists could now be exposed to a crowd of captive consumers for any length of time. With the advent of the 12" single, that exposure was most usually five- to seven-minutes or so, and usually included an extended bridge with revved up instrumental features and sometimes a repeated verse or two to close it out. Seamlessly mixing three or four songs from the same artist with similar beats and complimentary structure allowed the record companies to keep an artist in the buying public's ear to show versatility and ensure memorability. 

Gloria Gaynor, Carol Douglas, and even Donna Summer herself ("Try Me, I Know We Can Make It," "I Remember Yesterday/Love's Unkind/Back In Love Again," "Once Upon A Time/Faster and Faster to Nowhere/Fairy Tail High/Say Something Nice") followed the formula. Additionally, covers of popular songs from the 60s and early 70s into disco anthems was quite common. Gloria Gaynor states in her totally sweet autobiography I Will Survive that she always insisted on recording at least two disco covers on each of her albums, dating back as far as 1974.

The trend continued to Amii Stewart's "Knock on Wood," Witch Queen's "Get it On," and our own Donna had a hit with "Could It Be Magic." One less common feature of "MacArthur Park Suite" is the extended radio version of the song, followed by an original creation ("One of a Kind"), then back to the "Mac" melody and bridge, and then into the superb and Summer-penned "Heaven Knows" and back to "Mac" in more than reprise fashion. This formula was so powerful that it was copied the following year in another sweeping disco epic by the sensational Marlena Shaw "Suite Seventeen." From her Take A Bite album, "Suite" uses the familiar "It Was a Very Good Year" attributed to Ole Blue Eyes ( Frank Sinatra, who picked up a Grammy for Best Vocal Performance for it in 1965), interwoven in a similar style as "Mac" to include the Shaw-penned "Child of the Ghetto," the double entendre original "Love Dancin'" and the classic disco cover of "Touch Me In The Morning." Shaw's offering also topped out near 18-minutes, but met with far less success than Donna's "MacArthur Park."

		The star-maker, "Love To Love You, Baby," I saved for last because of its dual function in the context of this study. The heady bass guitar line and enrapturing siren's song of the singer fantastically in the throes of ecstasy were as much right on time as they were on ramps for more to traverse deeper sexual topics. When LTLYB first hit the airwaves of America during a very cold winter in 1975-1976, we had already had our share of sexy, breathy seductresses coo their way into our quadraphonic stereos and bedrooms.

"Pillow Talk" by Sylvia was one of the first to use the breathy melody and sounds of pleasure. At nearly 40 years of age, the former 1950s era rock star of Mickey & Sylvia fame was making a come back on her own label with a song that she had written originally for Al Green. As Richie Unterberg of allmusic.com puts it best, "Murmuring about romantic love with a seductive come-on that was pretty bawdy by early-'70s standards, she was the yin to Barry White's yang, if you will, offering a kinder, gentler brand of between-the-sheets soul from a feminine viewpoint." Sylvia spends the better part of the last half of the record in an orgasmic condition that trails off leaving the listener to wonder somewhat uncomfortably if anyone in the recording studio has noticed that she's missing (and what's she doing?), or were they a part of the cause for the missing vocals?

And this was nearly three years before LTLYB was released. With the groundwork that The Maestro Barry White had already done in the early '70s, Sylvia's #1 hit, others like Maria Muldaur's double entendre-laden "Midnight at the Oasis," and the newly uncensored world of the sexual revolution bubbling under an explosion of disco, the entire world was probably ready to send the camel to bed and revel in the 17-minute classic work of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder and the freedom it represented as a natural and timely progression.

As each turn of the road gets us closer to our destination, it's just as relevant that LTLYB was a proper turn made at the proper time. Groundbreaking in the shear length of its extended format, an entire realm of musical demonstration and exploration could be opened up. If the public would accept LTLYB at this length, what else would they accept? In my library, I can find only one which tops its duration, Macho's 1978 "I'm a Man" (itself a disco cover of Steve Winwood's gritty vocals as part of The Spencer Davis Group), which clocks in at 17:45 as a single, non-medley song. 

Closely following LTLYB, and therefore jumping on the bandwagon and continuing the evolution of both the genre and music, were a number of talented artists whose work also continues to the present. Diana Ross has said that "Love Hangover" would never have been as successful as it was without LTLYB debuting earlier in the year. Donna has referenced Diana's comments in interviews and takes it as the greatest compliment. Ms. Ross through the years had been accused of ripping off the concept of LTLYB for Hangover. But, as we can see, it was just the next twist of the road.

		Cerrone's highly successful "Love in C Minor" features double-digit minutes as we eavesdrop on three young ladies tipsy from champagne consumed at a sidewalk café commenting on the size of Cerrone's, uh, ambition, and whispering about what they would do with it. And then they do it as we listen. "Love..." takes the revolution to another plateau, so to speak, and certainly, through its success, opened even more avenues such as for Musique's risque "In the Bush," and many others in the disco era, as well as more contemporary artists like Madonna ("Erotic" and its video).

For Donna Summer and for our social and musical taste, it's truly been a journey for us to come from saccharine sweet bobby soxer rock and roll to the wide range of styles, genres, and artists who occupy to expansive highway of contemporary music success. As much as anyone in the Classics category, Donna Summer bravely took on new challenges, established norms and mores, and relied upon her innate creativity to give us heartfelt products. Whether the marketing team exploited the talent and/or the moment and its momentum is probably irrelevant. What is important is that Donna Summer did and still does a wonderful job at creating new music and ways of thinking. While she may not sing "Love to Love You, Baby" in concert any longer, we can cherish the 17-minute recording and know that its time has passed. While her catalog remains timeless in some ways and timed in others, there is no doubt that this ordinary girl has a lot more to give us. Me? I'm going to fasten my seatbelt...it's going to be a thrilling ride whichever turns we take.

David Thornton