Donna Summer – Bad
Girls (Deluxe Edition CD Set)
Sound: B
Original Album: B Extras: A-
Second only to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack,
no double set in the entire Disco era of the late 1970s was more prominent than
Bad Girls, a 1979 tour de force that became the peak of Donna Summer’s
hot streak as the Queen of Disco. That
includes several comeback projects. It
is all the more remarkable, because it was the third of a still-unprecedented
four consecutive double-albums sets that cover the trajectory of the heights of
her commercial success.
This new deluxe CD set offers the entire album on one CD,
plus a bonus track, then a second CD that has a collection of most of her key
12” vinyl singles of the time. These
are the square root of Turntablists, DJs, and samplers worldwide in Hip Hop,
Techno, and Dance music to this day.
Part of that is the production savvy of Giorgio Moroder, who,
occasionally joined by Pete Bellotte and Gary Klein, were at the top of the
Disco trend, even more than The Bee Gees, who burned out one album after their
famed mega-soundtrack success.
The main album offers hits like “Hot Stuff”, the
title song, “Dim All The Lights”, and “Walk Away”, “I Feel
Love” sound-alikes “Our Love” & “Lucky”, and personal
album cut favorites that have cult followings like “Sunset People”.
The PCM CD 2.0 Stereo sound quality is very good, and
especially better than the ever-disappointing Donna Summer Anthology the
defunct-as-stand-alone Polygram Records issued before MCA/Universal bought them
out. It has been a common story that
Polygram was doing some substandard reissues, only to have Universal outdo
them, as the Millennium Collection CD series has proven. Still, the mixing of the time shows its age
a bit, which should make for an interesting comparison when the DVD-Audio and
Super Audio CD equivalents are issued.
It is doubtful this material will ever sound better in the regular CD
format and is among the last times this will ever be issued in the format.
If the limited pressings of this set did not make it
enough of a collector’s item, then the collection of 12” singles does even more
so. It’s amazing to have them all here,
and much better than the Anthology set.
The only omission, though the sticker on the disc says this is a complete
collection (to the end of her Disco run), is the absence of “Love To Love
You Baby”. Summer may not be as
happy with that song, but its absence is unfortunate, though there seems to be
no room left. These CDs are packed to
the edges with music, but maybe Universal will do that justice soon. It is too key to be ignored.
Purists will still need the actual vinyl for scratching
and club playback, but there is nothing wrong with having such high-quality CD
copies as this. The songs for CD #2
are:
I Feel Love
Last Dance
Mac Arthur Park Suite
Hot Stuff
Bad Girls
Walk Away
Dim All The Lights
No More Tears (Enough is Enough) – Duet with Barbra
Streisand
On The Radio (for the Foxes soundtrack)
There is also a very interesting and worthwhile inclusion
of a demo cut of “Bad Girls” at the end of CD #1, which gives us a fine
look into the process in which the song was conceived. The Deluxe edition series has been very good
about doing this kind of thing. Now we
can take a look at specific songs. It
is hard to necessarily call this a concept album, but it does have a constant
theme of seduction in Disco genre language and some of the most impressive art
design and photography ANY album EVER had.
The photo credit goes to Harry Langdon.
The character and color quality is greatly reproduced so exceptionally,
that only the smaller size will be a complaint. Now to specific songs.
“I Feel Love” proved that Summer was no one-hit
wonder. Of course, it was not as
sexually explicit as “Love To Love You Baby”, but plenty of explicit sex
was read into it that was not there upon release. Many have seen the footage of Summer doing her unique
interpretation of the song “The Robot” dance, but the song also happens to show
how savvy Moroder, Summer-as-vocalist, and Casablanca Records was at the
time. Casablanca was a maverick label
run by the late great Neil Bogart, an underrated, brilliant showman label owner
we barely ever see the likes of these days, deeply explaining one of the
reasons the business is in such an unnecessary slump.
This song also shows Moroder’s mark as a producing auteur,
with his unique electronic stylings.
Those who tried to write him off as a “mere Disco maestro” now look bad
when you consider the influence of this particular work on Electronica and
electronic film music today. That would
extend to Moroder’s work on another masterwork motion picture of the time, the
now-legendary Brian De Palma remake of Scarface (1983), now back with a
vengeance.
“Last Dance” is a song that outlasted its own motion
picture appearance, the silly Thank God It’s Friday, the 1978 quickie
film that Jeff Goldblum and Debra Winger somehow survived. As compared to the other songs, it does
sound like it was for a film; with its Disco beat much more Pop oriented. This was a very smart move commercially, as
the song was far more successful than the film and it was almost sexless as
compared to her earlier hits.
“MacArthur Park” is the hit remake of the notorious
Richard Harris hit written by the great Jimmy Webb. Just when everyone who hated it thought it was gone, Summer made
it an even bigger hit! It is not,
especially as compared to what we have to put up with now, it sounds real good,
but was not that bad in its time. It at
least falls under the “glorious annoying” category of songs that bother certain
people for no good reason, giving it a new cache.
“Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls” are interesting
in comparison to “I Feel Love” and “Love To Love You Baby”, in
that they are still interested in provoking the sexually explicit, but also the
illicit. They are more playful, coy and
comparatively Rock oriented allowing another underrated aspect of these songs
to fly: Summer’s vocals. She never gets the credit she deserves for
the great voice she (still) has. Though
not as pronounced as it could have been in these songs, Summer has a very
Soul-able voice, but her, Moroder, and company had it tempered into a certain
style that sometimes was storyteller, other times stage actress, then always
empathetically convincing singer.
One place this was proven further was on the Barbra
Streisand duet “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)”. When it was announced that this duet was to
take place, everyone went into shock.
Streisand’s going Disco again?
It wasn’t going to stop with the theme to The Main Event? What would they come up with? How is Summer going to hold up against one
of the greatest singers alive?
Streisand’s going to get airplay on “black” radio? Streisand’s going to have a Dance hit? Summer is going to be more respectable? And for those savvy enough to sense Disco
would burn out (was that Ethel Merman Disco album a hint?), is this Summer’s
way to stay in the game if Disco falls through? Is she going to invade Diana Ross’
territory for keeps?
This may seem pat now, but the buzz was huge, especially for a project
involving two women at the time.
Britney and Madonna French kissing has NOTHING on this!
The one technique that was used on several Summer hits
that could be seen as forerun by Diana Ross’ seminal “Love Hangover” is
the opening minute is the slow “serious” part, then the song breaks out into
its “Dance” section. First, Streisand
sings, then Summer cuts in beautifully, then after a few back and forth
moments, they start to sing in unison, and the song breaks out. It also did commercially, being one of the
biggest Dance hits of all time, hitting big on very other chart it could in a
way no song ever crossed over before, and becoming one of the few true classics
of the Disco era that survives beyond the era as one of the too-few great songs
about woman’s liberation. That puts it
somewhere between Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” and “Sisters Are Doing
It For Themselves”, the Eurythmics/Aretha Franklin duet that was originally
intended to pair Eurythmics’ lead-singer Annie Lennox with Tina Turner.
It is fair to say this single song foresaw women in 1980s
Pop very clearly, though it is not always seen as that. Of course, it is repetitious like many a
Disco song, but the vocal talents surprisingly complemented each other
spectacularly and there has never been another song like it since. Their voices were exceptionally up for this
record and the extraordinary efforts show.
Neither has cut a better duet since, though Streisand has tried over and
over again. So successful is the song,
it gives new meaning to the term “bad girls”.
All in all, that makes this set of Donna Summer – Bad
Girls one of the best sets in this Chronicles series since Universal took
over and began the Deluxe Edition series.
This is especially because it is such a surprise, a time capsule on the
one hand, a work way ahead of its time on the other. Add the extras, and this might become of the most valuable sets
they will ever issue. If that does not
spell “classic”, then nothing does.
- Nicholas Sheffo
