The Donna Summer

In the late '80s, the Mike Stock/Matt Aitken/Pete Waterman team was as important to European dance-pop as Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte had been to Euro-disco in the late '70s. Many pop critics hated Stock/Aitken/Waterman's slick, high-gloss approach with a passion, but what critics like and what the public buys are often two different things – and the British team had the Midas touch when it came to Dead or Alive, Samantha Fox, Rick Astley, and other '80s favorites. So, for Donna Summer, working with them was a logical decision when, in 1989, she made a temporary return to a Euro-dance-pop setting.

2009 installment in this series, entitled Classic… The Masters Collection. Each release features hits, album tracks and fan favorites from the artist's beloved catalog. This compilation series certainly lives up to it's title, for this music is truly Classic! This collection from the Disco diva features 18 tracks including 'Love to Love You Baby', 'On the Radio', 'I Feel Love' and more. Universal.

Ladonna Gaines moved from her hometown of Boston to live and work in Munich in 1968, appearing in the musicals Hair and Porgy and Bess. It was during her time here that she met her husband Helmut Summer, their marriage giving her the opportunity to change her name to Donna Summer. Her first big hit was Love to Love You Baby which became an international smash and featured her sighing vocal over a disco beat. I Feel Love was her next major success and along with her screen debut in the awful disco film Thank God it’s Friday, which gained her an Oscar for the song Last Dance, she was now recognised as the true diva of disco. The ‘70s also saw her release the hits MacArthur Park, Hot Stuff, Bad Girls and No More Tears (Enough is Enough) with Barbra Streisand.

After becoming the queen of disco thanks to orgasmathon hits like "Love to Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love," Donna Summer topped off her five-year rise to fame with this live set. Certainly not a contender for first-disc choice, Live and More still works quite well as a '70s sampler for the converted. And since disco was the party music par excellence, the album's feel is one of a all-nighter in action. Featuring her signature hits and a fat chunk of disco tracks from the Once Upon a Time record, sides one and three solidify Summer's reputation as one of the most exciting and slick singers on stage.

Bad Girls marked the high-water mark in Donna Summer's career, spending six weeks at Number One, going double platinum, and spinning off four Top 40 singles, including the chart-topping title song and "Hot Stuff," which sold two million copies each, and the million-selling, Number Two hit "Dim All the Lights." Producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte recognized that disco was going in different directions by the late '70s, and they gave the leadoff one-two punch of "Hot Stuff" and "Bad Girls" a rock edge derived from new wave. The two-LP set was divided into four musically consistent sides, with the rocksteady beat of the first side giving way to a more traditional disco sound on the second side, followed by a third side of ballads, and a fourth side with a more electronic, synthesizer-driven sound that recalled Summer's 1977 hit "I Feel Love."