Donna Summer
Donna Summer was the Queen of Disco in the 1970s with a pop/dance/rock sound that was a hybrid of American soul and European synthesizer based music. Summer's musical career was launched on stage in Munich, Germany, in productions of Hair and Porgy & Bess. In Germany, she hooked up with producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, and delivered the orgasmic "Love to Love You Baby" which brought her worldwide fame. Summer was the first female artist to garner back-to-back multi-platinum double albums and the first female artist to incorporate synthesizers as well as the first artist to create an extended play song.
Musically, she diversified into pop and rock, while career-wise, she appeared in the disco dud, Thank God It's Friday (1978), for which the song, "Last Dance" won a Best Song Oscar, as well as numerous American TV music specials. Her career hit its zenith in 1980 with the release of the critically-acclaimed record, "The Wanderer", a diverse fusion of rock and dance which is still considered to be the forerunner of such range of artists as Billy Idol, Whitney Houston and Alanis Morissette. Summer returned to the Top of the Pop charts in the late 80s and early 90s with various dance hits. She recently ended her longtime association with Polygram and moved to Nashville to work on country music and to pursue her other passion, painting. In 1998, she won a Grammy for Best Dance Single and has plans to launch a Broadway musical, Ordinary Girl, based on her life.
Donna Summer has earned five Grammy Awards, six American Music Awards, three consecutive #1 platinum double albums (she's the only artist, male or female, ever to accomplish this), 11 gold albums, four #1 singles, 2 platinum singles, and 12 gold singles. Donna is also the first female artist to have a #1 single and #1 album on the Billboard charts simultaneously ("Live & More;" "MacArthur Park" 1978) a feat she also repeated six months later ("Bad Girls" & "Hot Stuff" in 1979). She has charted 22 #1 hits on the Billboard Disco/Dance charts over a period of 25 years, a milestone solidifying her as The Queen of Dance.
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