Donna Summer's title as the "Queen of Disco" wasn't mere hype. Like many of her contemporaries, she was a talented vocalist trained as a powerful gospel belter, but she set herself apart with her songwriting ability, magnetic stage presence, and shrewd choice of studio collaborators, all of which resulted in sustained success. During the '70s alone, she topped the Billboard club chart 11 times with high-quality, often-high concept material that included the rapturous "Love to Love You Baby," the innovative "I Feel Love," and a radically transformed "MacArthur Park." These crossover hits embodied the disco era with audacious musicality and uninhibited eroticism. After her subgenre was declared dead, Summer was very much part of the evolution of dance music. Through the feminist anthem "She Works Hard for the Money," she became an MTV star, and she continued to top the club chart with disco-rooted house singles through 2010, 35 years after her breakthrough. Indeed, she was the ultimate disco diva.
Donna Summer's contribution to Universal's mid-priced 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection series is a decent, concise look at the queen of disco's career, including such natural choices as "Love to Love You Baby," "I Feel Love," "Bad Girls," "Hot Stuff," and "On the Radio," as well as early-'80s hits like "She Works Hard for the Money" and "Love Is in Control." 1995's Endless Summer remains the best single-disc introduction, since it covers more territory, presents a more rounded look, and includes many other singles that charted, but this works perfectly for those who want to stick to the basics.
The Donna Summer Anthology is a double compilation album by the American singer Donna Summer, released by Polygram Records in 1993. The compilation featured the majority of Summer's best known songs right from the start of her success to the present day. Summer had originally made her name during the disco era in the 1970s and in the decade that followed had experimented with different styles. Most of the tracks on this compilation are the original album versions of the songs, which were sometimes edited down for their release as a single. Included for the first time are two remixed tracks from her then previously unreleased I'm a Rainbow album, which had been recorded in 1981 but had been shelved by her record company at the time.
This album is a terrific compilation of Donna Summer's greatest hits. The album has primarily the disco songs that made her a smash success such as "Love To Love You Baby," "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," "Last Dance," and "Dim All The Lights." You also get her classic duet with Barbra Streisand, "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough);" and a group called Brooklyn Dreams helped Donna out on background vocals for "Heaven Knows." There are twenty (yes, twenty) songs on this single CD, so you don't get many 12" extended versions of the songs. To compensate for that loss, however, there is a second bonus CD included inside the jewel case with remixes of some great songs including "Hot Stuff," "I Feel Love," and "You're So Beautiful."
A collection of later Donna Summer material, including such song as "On the Radio," "I Feel Love," and "Bad Girls." Although disco was beginning to peak, Summer was riding high, dominating the R&B and pop charts. In some ways, these songs were more varied than her pre-'77 cuts, because only "Love to Love You Baby," from her Oasis material, was a major hit.