Donna Summer

508. Musical Youth – Pass the Dutchie (1982)

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The Intro

As a young boy in the early 80s, I considered Birmingham reggae group Musical Youth incredibly cool. A bunch of schoolchildren singing an incredibly catchy tune about… well, I didn’t know as I was very young. It didn’t matter though, because I loved Pass the Dutchie regardless of the subject matter.

Before

Musical Youth were formed in 1979 by the fathers of Kelvin and Michael Grant, and Frederick (known as Junior) and Patrick Waite, respectively. Frederick Waite Sr had been a member of Jamaican reggae group The Techniques and he was the original lead vocalist. Junior was their drummer and backing vocalist, while Patrick played bass. Michael Grant played keyboard while Kelvin was guitarist, with both also providing backing vocals. When they formed, the members ages ranged from seven to 15, with Kelvin the youngest.

Despite all attending Duddeston Manor School, Musical Youth gained live dates in West Indian working men’s clubs around Birmingham. Wearing their influences on their sleeves – which included Aswad, Sugar Minott and Gregory Isaacs – they released a double A-side single in 1981. Generals/Political was issued on local label 021 Records (021 being the Birmingham area code at the time.

In 1982, following an appearance on BBC Radio One’s The John Peel Show, Musical Youth were signed to MCA Records, who convinced Waite Sr to relinquish the lead singer role to the boys’ school friend Dennis Seaton. While supporting Culture Club at Heaven in London, the crowd went wild to their cover of The Mighty Diamonds’ Pass the Kouchie.

The Jamaican act had released their ode to smoking cannabis (based on 1968 instrumental Full Up by Leroy Sibbles) a year previous, and despite it being banned by their government, it raised their profile in the reggae scene.

There was no way MCA would let schoolboys release a song about a kouchie, which was a big marijuana bong. But there was also no doubt the song was infectious. So what could they do?

Co-producer Toney Owens hit upon an idea after getting home late one night on an empty stomach. What about changing ‘kouchie’ to ‘dutchie’ which was a patois term for a Dutch oven cooking pot? Once agreed, it was easy to change the other dodgy lyric – The ‘How does it feel when you got no herb’ refrain substituted the last word to ‘food’. The spoken word intro was inspired by the opening to U-Roy’s Rule the Nation.

It’s worth noting that Pass the Dutchie was also produced by the team of Peter Collins and Pete Waterman, who had been working together since 1980. Collins went on to produce many big acts in the 80s – and Waterman will of course become a fixture on this blog as the 80s progress.

Review

It’s not just nostalgia for my musical youth that makes me love Pass the Dutchie. It’s very refreshing to hear some reggae in this blog for the first time in a while. Yes, it’s lacking the deep bass of the original, and by transforming it from a cannabis anthem to a pop song about being a hungry school boy, it veers into novelty hit territory. But it’s better than that. The intro may also not be original, but it’s an inspired introduction and must have felt like a call to arms for black schoolboys – only a year on from the awful race riots that helped inspire Ghost Town.

Speeding the tempo up a notch from Pass the Kouchie was also a great choice, making it more palatable for the pop audience of 1982. In fact, Pass the Dutchie gets the balance just right – it’s pop-friendly, without feeling lightweight. It still feels like authentic reggae. It’s hard to believe Waterman is involved in the production duties, when you consider what he would later become known for.

Also adding to its reggae credentials was the enlisting of Don Letts as the director of the music video. Letts had ran the London clothing store Acme Attractions, which was frequented by Bob Marley, Debbie Harry, the Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde and The Clash. He went on to DJ at The Roxy in Covent Garden, and helped introduce punks to dub and reggae.

Letts’ video features Musical Youth performing on the south bank of the River Thames in London, by Lambeth Bridge. All too aware of racial tensions in the UK, he does a great job of keeping things light, portraying the band as fun-loving kids just wanting to have fun. A school official appears to arrest them, but he falls and hurts himself. The video is interspersed with Musical Youth standing trial, but they’re cleared and the video ends with everyone having a great time in the courtroom, like a scene from a bad musical.

This video not only helped Musical Youth appeal to the masses – it made them the first black artists to be played on the fledgling MTV. This was months before Billie Jean – despite what the new Michael Jackson biopic Michael (2026) would have you believe.

After

Within a month of its release, Musical Youth were a fledgling sensation. Pass the Dutchie rocketed to number 1 in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Australia. Thanks to MTV airplay, it also soared to 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. They hung out with Jackson and met Bubbles.

Debut LP The Youth of Today swiftly followed and also performed well, as did two singles it spawned – Youth of Today peaked at 13 and Never Gonna Give You Up (not the Rick Astley song) climbed to six in 1983. Follow-up Heartbreaker couldn’t break the top 40.

However, it began to look like Musical Youth may be a flash in the pan when their second album Different Style! performed noticeably less well. A cover of John Holt’s Tell Me Why only went to 33, 007 climbed to 26 and She’s Trouble failed to chart. Although business had briefly picked up when they featured on Donna Summer’s Unconditional Love, which was a number 14 hit, the end was already in sight. Sixteen, featuring Jody Watley, was their last charting single, reaching 23 in 1984. Maybe the public saw them as a novelty, after all.

Tragically, this group of schoolchildren then found themselves old before their time due to financial troubles, legal issues and personal problems. Seaton left the band in 1985, releasing a solo album, Imagine That…, which sank without trace in 1989. A reunion was planned in 1993, but was cut short when Patrick, who was awaiting a court appearance after a robbery, died suddenly after collapsing due to a hereditary heart condition, aged only 24. Remixes of Pass the Dutchie were released in 1994, but failed to chart.

Michael and Seaton tried to stay in the music business, setting up a production company and a band respectively, but didn’t make much of a mark. In 2001 they announced they were reforming Musical Youth as a duo – Junior, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, would not be taking part. They toured the nostalgia circuit, and featured on Pato Banton’s 2004 single, Pretty Woman. The duo also released a new version of Pass the Dutchie in 2008. Michael’s brother Kelvin began a solo career but failed to get noticed. Junior died in a mental health unit in 2022, aged 55.

The Outro

That same year, Pass the Dutchie gained a new lease of life after appearing in the Netflix series Stranger Things.

The Info

Written by

Jackie Mittoo, Fitzroy “Bunny” Simpson & Lloyd ‘Judge’ Ferguson

Producers

Toney Owens, Pete Waterman & Peter Collins

Weeks at number 1

3 (2-22 October)

Trivia

Births

4 October: Jazz saxophonist YolanDa Brown
7 October: Footballer Jermain Defoe
10 October: Actor Dan Stevens

Deaths

3 October: Actress Vivien Merchant
6 October: Composer Philip Green
8 October: Labour MP Philip Noel-Baker/Musician Erik Routley
16 October: Artist Rory McEwen
18 October: Conductor Leslie Jones
20 October: Scottish footballer Jimmy McGrory

Meanwhile…

11 October: The Mary Rose, which sank in 1545, was raised from the Solent.

12 October: The London Victory Parade of 1982 was held to mark the end of the Falkands War.

15 October : The Ford Sierra was launched as the replacement for the Cortina.

21 October: Sinn Féin won their first seats on the Northern Ireland Assembly. Gerry Adams won the Belfast West seat.  

505. Irene Cara – Fame (1982)

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The Intro

Irene Cara’s infectious theme to the musical Fame failed to chart in the UK when released in the summer of 1980 as a preview to the forthcoming film. However, the movie became huge, and the title track won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Two years later, the spin-off TV series was so popular in the UK, a re-release saw the song become top of the pops.

Before

The film had been conceived by producer David De Silva in 1976, inspired by A Chorus Line. He hired Christopher Gore to write a film about the lives of ambitious students at the real-life High School of Performing Arts, based in Manhattan, New York City. It was directed by Alan Parker, an English director who had worked on some of the most memorable UK television advertisements of all time, before making his first movie, Bugsy Malone, in 1976. He named the film after David Bowie’s 1975 song. Taking the lead role of Coco Hernandez was a young singer and actress called Irene Cara, who Parker was initially sceptical of.

Irene Cara Escalera was born on 18 March 1959 in the Bronx. Her father was Puerto Rican and her mother was Cuban. She began dance lessons as a five-year-old and was only eight when she recorded her first album, Ésta es Irene. She also appeared on The Tonight Show.

As a teen in the 70s she attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan and went on to appear in Broadway shows, before making the move into TV. Critical acclaim came with her role in the mini-series Roots: The Next Generations in 1976. She was originally cast in Fame as a dancer, but when De Silva, co-producer Alan Marshall and Gore heard her voice, they made her character a singer.

The musical supervisor on Fame was Michael Gore, brother of Lesley Gore, who sang the original hit version of It’s My Party – a cover of which became a UK number 1 for Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin in 1981. Gore worked with Dean Pitchford on the songs for the movie, and when he played him the chorus melody for the theme, Pitchford instantly replied ‘Fame! I’m gonna live forever!’ However, the rest of the theme came less easily, and it took a month to write.

It made perfect sense to write the song from the stardom-hungry Hernandez’s perspective, so Cara sang the funky title track. Among the backing singers was Luther Vandross, who was yet to become a star, but had provided backing vocals on Bowie’s soul album Young Americans – which featured Bowie’s Fame. It was Vandross that came up with the winning idea to chant ‘Remember’ over and over, as well as contributing other ideas.

The title track was originally released in the UK in June 1980, the same month as the film hit US cinemas (it hit UK cinemas the following month). The single sank and initially the critical response to the film was mixed, but it became a box office hit, and then came the accolades. Out of six Oscar nominations in 1981, Fame won Best Original Score and Best Original Song. Another song from the film – Out Here on My Own – had also been nominated.

Two years on from the film, a TV series sharing its name began on NBC in the US and BBC One in the UK. Many of the cast returned – but Cara had declined, with her role taken by Erica Gimpel, who sang the theme tune too. Nonetheless, it was Cara’s version that was rereleased and subsequently became number 1.

Review

I was too young to want anything to do with Fame at the time, and to be honest, even from a young age I would recoil a bit at stage show children and teenagers showing off. And there was certainly a lot of it about back then. So it’s hard to judge the theme song on its own merits.

However, I’ve always appreciated it’s very good at what it does – e.g., it makes you want to fly – high – and, as John Shuttleworth would say, ‘punch the air’. And listening with a fresh pair of ears, it’s great really. Slickly produced, a passionate vocal from Cara, and well arranged too – props to Vandross, who was spot on in inventing the ‘remember’ hook. I still don’t think I’d ever choose to listen to it, but I wouldn’t complain if I heard it for the millionth time, either.

To promote the re-release, Cara starred in a new video, with scenes filmed mainly on and around Broadway. It’s interspersed with clips from the film. Considering it coincided with the TV series, which didn’t feature Cara, this may have been rather confusing to some. It did the job though, and Cara on top of a taxi is an iconic 80s pop moment.

After

Fame was the third bestselling song in the UK of 1982. Surprisingly, neither the original release nor the 1982 single did the same feat in the US, peaking at number four only.

Cara had continued to release music and star in TV and films after the success of Fame, with mixed results. Several series she hoped to star in failed to get picked up, and her album Anyone Can Dream, released in 1982, was a commercial failure.

In early 1983 she was working on a follow-up when she was contacted by Paramount Pictures to provide lyrics for the soundtrack of a new film called Flashdance. Ironically, Giorgio Moroder, the genius producer behind the project, had approached Cara after Fame, but she declined as she didn’t want to be compared to Donna Summer, who of course was best known for I Feel Love, her number 1 collaboration with Moroder.

Moroder had tasked his session drummer Keith Forsey, who played on I Feel Love, to write the lyrics to what would be the title track to the new film, which starred Jennifer Beals as a dancer who dreams of becoming a professional ballerina. Forsey had stalled, so he and Cara set to work. Having been shown the film’s final scene, in which Beals auditions in front of a panel of judges, they were inspired to write a euphoric song about achieving your dreams through dancing. Not too far removed from Fame, then, but with a more modern sound, thanks to Moroder. Cara sang Flashdance… What a Feeling, and it became number 1 in the US and around the world – although it was held off the top spot in the UK by Rod Stewart’s Baby Jane.

Cara sang Flashdance… What a Feeling, and it became number 1 in the US and around the world – although it was held off the top spot in the UK by Rod Stewart’s Baby Jane. Nonetheless, the single also won many accolades. She shared the Academy Award for Best Original Song with Moroder and Forsey, becoming the first black woman to win an Oscar in a non-acting category and the youngest to receive an Oscar for songwriting.

Cara never charted in the UK again, though she had a few more US hits. Her next album What a Feelin’ continued her collaboration with Moroder, and its single Why Me? reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. She starred as herself in the 1983 comedy movie DC Cab, and her song The Dream (Hold On To Your Dream), which played out over the end credits, reached 37. Her final US hit, Breakdance, peaked at number eight in 1984.

She continued to act, appearing in films including City Heat (1984), Certain Fury (1985) and Busted Up (1986). The following year she released the LP Carasmatic.

In the 90s, Cara starred in a touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar, released Eurodance singles and worked as a backing vocalist. 1993 saw her awarded $1.5 million from her 1985 lawsuit in which she claimed royalties from Flashdance and her first two solo LPs had been withheld from her. She later claimed this stopped record labels from working with her.

Cara appeared in the 2005 NBC TV series Hit Me Baby, One More Time, and in 2011 she released her last album, Irene Cara Presents Hot Caramel

The Outro

Cara died of arteriosclerosis and hypertensive heart disease on 25 November 2022, aged 63.

The Info

Written by

Michael Gore & Dean Mitford

Producer

Michael Gore

Weeks at number 1

3 (17 July-6 August)

Trivia

Births

18 July: Actor Andre Alexander
28 July: Footballer Michael Rose
30 July: Cricketer James Anderson
6 August: Actor Karl Davies

Deaths

19 July: Actor John Harvey
21 July: Bible translator John Bertram Phillips
22 July: Anti-apartheid activist Sir Robert Birley
27 July: Olympic swimmer Hilda James/Olympic runner Jack Powell
29 July: Engineer Maysie Chalmers/Army general Sir Richard Gale
2 August: Cathleen Nesbitt
3 August: Art historian David Carritt
5 August: Orthopaedic surgeon Sir John Charnley

Meanwhile…

19 July: Home Secretary William Whitelaw announces that the Queen’s bodyguard, Michael Trestrail, has resigned from the Metropolitan Police Service over a relationship with a male prostitute.

20 July: The Provisional IRA detonates two bombs during British military ceremonies in Hyde Park and Regents Park, Central London. Eight soldiers are killed, 47 people are wounded, and seven horses die.

21 July: The Falklands War Royal Navy flagship HMS Hermes returns home to Portsmouth to a hero’s welcome.

22 July: Production of the Ford Cortina ends after 20 years and five generations.
Also on this day, the exclusion zone around the Falklands is lifted, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rejects calls in parliament for a return of the death penalty for terrorist murder.

23 July: A coroner’s jury returns the verdict of suicide on Roberto Calvi.

1 August: The Conservative government creates Britoil as the privatised successor to the British National Oil Corporation.

3 August: The Queen Elizabeth 2 returns to civilian use.

4 August: The first child of The Prince and Princess of Wales is christened William Arthur Philip Louis.

6 August: The Kessock Bridge in Inverness is opened by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

409. Donna Summer – I Feel Love (1977)

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The Intro

‘Queen of Disco’ Donna Summer sold hundreds of millions of records in the 70s and 80s. Her sole UK number 1, I Feel Love, is to put it mildly, one of the greatest, most influential records of all time. Pointing the way towards the future of pop, this collaboration with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte will never, ever grow old. It is as important to music as The Beatles’ She Loves You.

Before

Summer was born LaDonna Adrian Gaines on 31 December 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts. The third of seven children, her father was a butcher and her mother a schoolteacher. Her performing debut took place at church when she was aged 10, replacing another child who failed to appear. A popular child, at high school she performed in school musicals. In 1967, weeks before graduation, Gaines left Boston for New York, where she joined blues rock group Crow. Allegedly the band split when they failed to be signed due to the label only showing an interest in her.

Gaines remained in New York afterwards, where she auditioned to be in counterculture hit musical Hair. She agreed to take the role of Sheila in the Munich production. Her parents were reluctant for her to move to West Germany, but she did. In 1968 as Donna Gaines she released her first single Wasserman, a German cover of Hair‘s Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, on Polydor. Over the next few years she became fluent in German and starred in several musicals.

In 1971, Gaines moved to Vienna in Austria, where she married the native actor Helmuth Sommer. She got work as a backing singer, going under the name Gayn Pierre. While flitting between this work and being a part-time model, she got to know Moroder and Bellotte in Munich during a recording session with Three Dog Night at their studio. She signed with them in 1974, releasing their first fruits together, Denver Dream, as a single. Due to an error on the demo’s cover, Sommer decided to keep the name Donna Summer instead. Debut LP Lady of the Night came out that same year. This mix of rock, folk and pop performed respectably in the Netherlands, where it was initially released.

Then a year later Summer approached Moroder with a sketch of a song called Love to Love You. Raunchy and explicit, she was unsure she wanted her name putting to it, but agreed to record a demo. Moroder loved it and insisted her version be released. It reached 13 in the Netherlands, but Moroder knew this was just the start. He sent a tape to Casablanca records boss Neil Bogart in the States. Bogart was a lively hedonist and would play Love to Love You at his wild parties. He loved it, but told Moroder it needed to be longer. This was because people would end up having sex to it at his parties and he got sick of having to put the needle on the record again when it ended too soon. A reticent Summer eventually threw herself into the job, laying on a near-dark studio floor to record a vocal the like of which had never been heard in mainstream pop before. Over 16 minutes long and according to the BBC featuring 23 orgasm sounds, Love to Love You Baby introduced the world to Summer. This filthy disco classic, renamed by Bogart, reached two in the US and four in the UK in 1975.

Summer, Moroder and Bellotte wasted no time in capitalising on the success, with an album of the same name following, then two more, A Love Trilogy and Four Seasons of Love in 1976. These were disco concept albums, featuring lengthy dance floor epics on one side and shorter tracks on the flip. Summer had by now earned herself the nickname ‘First Lady of Love’. Sales dropped in the UK, although Winter Melody climbed to 27 in the UK singles chart.

That October, the trio set to work on another concept album. I Remember Yesterday was planned as an LP showcasing Summer’s ability to put her voice to varying music styles from the past, as well as her trademark disco stylings. The final track, it was decided, would be set to what they envisioned as the music of the future. That future was I Feel Love.

Although Moroder had spent several years developing his string-laden disco epics, he had history with the future of music. His song Son of My Father became the first number 1 to feature a synthesiser when covered by Chicory Tip in 1972. For I Feel Love, Moroder borrowed the Moog Modular 3P from classical composer Eberhard Schoener, who had been something of a Moog pioneer. Schoener’s assistant Robby Wedel proved integral in the recording process. Bellotte later called him the unsung hero of the track as he was able to control the Moog in a way nobody, including Robert Moog himself, thought possible.

The large unwieldy instrument, looking like a small TARDIS, was brought into Musicland Studios in Munich. The first line was laid down and Wedel taught Moroder and Bellotte how to synch tracks. It was he that produced the most distinctive and initiated bassline in electronic music, thought up by Moroder. Each note of the baseline was doubled by a delay effect, with the original note coming through the left channel and the delay through the right, creating that hypnotic strobing sensation. Moroder would alter the key at regular intervals to add variety. The recording process was laborious, with the unpredictable Moog going out of tune every 20 or 30 seconds. For the hi-hat sound they took white noise generated by the machine’s envelopes and cut it up. There was however one human element added to the instrumentation. Because they were unable to get a large enough kick drum sound from the Moog, they used their regular session drummer Keith Forsey, who added seven minutes of thump. Forsey later co-wrote Flashdance… What a Feeling with Moroder.

Summer and Bellotte were supposed to work together on the lyrics. Bellotte headed over to her house one night and got started while Summer was on the phone. It was three hours later before she finally came down, apologising for being on the phone to her astrologer, who was helping her decide between two men she was dating. Bellotte had finished writing the song. Summer made up for the wait by eventually recording her vocal in one take.

Review

There simply aren’t enough superlatives to describe this song. It’s far too big to even be called a song. It’s a cultural touchstone. A landmark in music. And unlike some of the greatest songs of all time, I think it’s actually impossible to tire of it. While researching it I fell down a rabbit hole and listened to over 90 minutes of this one song and the many remixes through the years. I could have gone on, too. It’s also an understatement to say no number 1 before it had ever sounded like this. The Moog fades in, shimmering, before the bass and its delay creates a totally addictive, motorik arpeggio, used on countless tunes ever since. It’s alien, electronic, magnetic. And you can feel blissed-out even before Summer comes in. But when she does… total ecstasy. She glides over the retro-futuristic electronic soundscape like an angel.

Understandably when I Feel Love is discussed it’s the backing that gets most of the attention. Summer’s one-take vocal, though, is fantastic. It takes George McCrae’s orgasmic falsetto on that earlier dancefloor revolutionary number 1, Rock Your Baby to another level. The only criticism I could possibly give this single is that it’s too short. The album version, 5:53 long, is hacked down to 3:45, with the fade-in happening too quick, and it fades out before the third verse. If ever a song deserved to stretch out, it’s this.

And yet, Casablanca didn’t seem so sure about I Feel Love. Moroder later recalled that Bogart enjoyed it but not as much as he’d hoped. Bellotte also says that nobody involved in the making of it seemed to realise just how special it was. It was initially tucked away as the B-side to the ballad Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over), released 1 May 1977. But it gained traction in nightclubs, particularly in the UK. Casablanca switched sides and I Feel Love became the single here and then internationally. It became huge. The 12″ version, at 8:15, is even better than the album version.

After

Summer followed I Feel Love with the beautiful Theme from “The Deep” (Down, Deep Inside), co-written by John Barry. It peaked at five. Love’s Unkind, also from I Remember Yesterday, went to number three. Summer, Moroder and Bellotte followed up that LP with Once Upon a Time… a double album based on Cinderella. In 1978 she acted in the modestly received disco comedy film Thank God It’s Friday. Her song from the soundtrack, Last Dance, saw Summer win her first of five Grammys, for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. Also that year, she notched up her first US number 1 with a live recording of MacArthur Park. Her final album for Casablanca, released in 1979, was Bad Girls. This double LP was the biggest selling and most acclaimed of her career. Moroder brought in Harold Faltermeyer to contribute. Hot Stuff and Bad Girls were both US number 1s, making her the first solo artist to have two songs in the Billboard top three. When her duet with Barbra Streisand, No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) also went to number 1 there, she became the first female artist to achieve three chart-toppers in one calendar year.

Casablanca wanted Summer to continue to record disco only but she had other ideas and as the 80s began she signed with the new Geffen Records. Her album The Wanderer was its first release. Despite a more eclectic sound, the album didn’t have the same impact in the UK as her Casablanca material. The next collection, Donna Summer, was released in 1982. A pregnant Summer sang at the funeral of Bogart, who died during recording sessions. The eponymous album was a success, with State of Independence a number 14 hit in the UK. It was produced by Quincy Jones, ending her long and fruitful relationship with Moroder and Bellotte.

This was followed by an I Feel Love (Mega Mix) by Patrick Cowley. The American producer, like Moroder, is now considered a disco and hi-NRG pioneer. But he was virtually unknown while alive. Shortly before he died of AIDS in November that year, Casablanca released this 15:43 version of I Feel Love that Cowley originally produced in 1978. Stretching the song out even further than before by looping the bassline, he laid new effects and synth work over long instrumental passages. Allegedly, Moroder isn’t a fan. This could be because Cowley somehow managed to better the original. This is the definitive version of I Feel Love, and made the song a UK hit once more, climbing to 21.

In 1983 Summer recorded the album She Works Hard for the Money to settle her contract dispute between Geffen and Casablanca. It was her bestselling album of the 80s and the single Unconditional Love, featuring Musical Youth, was her last UK chart hit for four years. She returned there with Dinner with Gershwin, which peaked at 13 in 1987. Two years later she worked with the UK’s biggest production team of the era – Stock Aitken Waterman. They were untouchable at the time and it paid off. The album Another Place and Time featured This Time I Know It’s for Real, which peaked at three, and I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt, reaching seven.

The 90s were a leaner time for the Queen of Disco but she was still doing well. In 1994, Melody of Love (I Wanna Be Loved) reached 21. Not bad for a new song tacked on to a greatest hits. The following year a new mix of I Feel Love was released and soared to eight. Featuring a new vocal from Summer and remixes by Masters of Work and Rollo & Sister Bliss from Faithless. I’ve heard many great remixes of the track and these are not among them – but they’re very ‘mid-90s’. Remixes of State of Independence followed in 1996 and gave Summer her final chart hit (13).

The Outro

In 2003 Summer released her autobiography Ordinary Girl: The Journey. Five years later came her first original album in 17 years – Crayons. It would be her last. She died on 17 May 2012 of lung cancer. A nonsmoker, she blamed the 9/11 attack for causing toxic fumes she inhaled, as she had an apartment near Ground Zero. Many of the world’s top singers, influenced by her, paid tribute. She had many hits in her lifetime but non compare to I Feel Love. Few things do.

The Info

Written by

Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder & Pete Bellotte

Producers

Giorgio Moroder & Pete Bellotte

Weeks at number 1

4 (23 July-19 August)

Trivia

Births

30 July: SNP MP Derek Mackay