Summer o Love

Summer Breeze: The Best of the Isley Brothers, a two-disc release from Sony Australia's Camden Deluxe division, actually focuses on the group's T-Neck years, from 1969's It's Our Thing through 1979's Winner Take All…

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.

In 1991 all living original Beach Boys members (except Brian Wilson, still under the care of his abusive psychologist Gene Landy) returned to the studio with Terry Melcher to record their follow-up to “Kokomo” with the album Summer in Paradise. This marked the first and only Beach Boys studio album that Brian Wilson had no participation in whatsoever. Produced entirely on a Macintosh Quadra computer, Summer in Paradise was recorded using a Beta version of Pro Tools with a rhythm section that was almost entirely synthesized. Despite its effort to be “the quintessential soundtrack of summer” the album quickly turned into an unmitigated disaster: musically, lyrically, and commercially. Al Jardine was suspended from the band in the early stages of the recording due to a “severe attitude problem,” however he was reinstated in final weeks leading up to the completion the project.

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.

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.

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.