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Pop Pantheon

DONNA SUMMER (with Black Girl Songbook's Danyel Smith)

Pop Pantheon

DJ Louie XIV

Music Commentary, Music, Pop Culture, Pop, Pop Music

4.7630 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2022

⏱️ 107 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Author of Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop and host of The Ringer podcast Black Girl Songbook, Danyel Smith, joins DJ Louie to explore the work, impact and legacy of the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer. Louie and Danyel begin with Donna’s early life as the eccentric Black girl in her Boston community during the 1950s and ‘60s, her move to Germany in 1968 to star in the musical Hair which eventually led to a star-crossed meeting with producers Giorgio Morodor and Pete Bellotte who would go on to be her primary collaborators, and their breakthrough with the radically orgasmic disco anthem “Love to Love You Baby” in 1975. Louie and Danyel then cover Donna, Giorgio and Pete’s ambitious run of concept albums through the mid ‘70s, their seismic innovations on 1977’s “I Feel Love”, considered the first electronic dance song, Donna’s status as the poster child for both the music and aesthetics of the disco movement thanks in part to her role in the film Thank God It’s Friday and its luscious Oscar-winning smash “Last Dance”, her magnum opus, 1979’s Bad Girls which set the template for the modern pop event album, and how she managed to outrun the sudden decline of disco thanks to 1983’s economical new-wave anthem “She Works Hard for the Money”. They conclude with Donna’s commercial decline in the latter 1980s, her Born-Again Christianity and controversial statements about the AIDS Epidemic and the gay community, her absolutely massive impact on the sound and look of pop stardom and how her legacy- and that of the movement she defined- has evolved over time. Finally, Louie and Danyel rank Donna Summer in the official Pop Pantheon. 


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to Pop Pantheon, the podcast where we completely overanalyze all of your favorite

0:15.5

pop stars and then rank them in the official Pop Pantheon. This is your host, DJ Louis the 14th, and I'm so glad to have

0:23.2

you back for another episode. Let me run down some housekeeping things really fast before we get

0:27.5

into it today. This is the final call for mailbag questions. You can send them to us at

0:34.2

Pop Pantheon Pod at gmail.com. They can be voice notes. They can be written.

0:40.1

They can be about Pop Pantheon. They can be about pop music in general. They can be questions about

0:45.7

ratings. Whatever you guys want. Send us your questions. This is the last call for alcohol

0:50.6

for the mailbag episode. Please don't forget to rate, rate review and subscribe to Pop Pantheon wherever you get your

0:56.7

podcasts.

0:57.6

Please follow us on social media at Pop Pantheon Pod and me at DJ L-O-U-I-E-X-I-V on both

1:03.9

Twitter and Instagram.

1:05.6

Hop in our Discord channel, the link for which will be in the show notes of this episode

1:09.4

and will also be on our social channels. Check out the Spotify playlist for this and every episode on both social media

1:16.2

and in the show notes of this episode. And guys, I am so excited to see everybody with their

1:22.7

niche legend pop pantheon dad hats. So many bought them we're so excited this is the first time

1:29.7

that we've ever like had this sort of exchange with our audience before where we put something up

1:34.4

for sale whatever it's been so amazing to see so many people buying the hats get yours they're so

1:41.0

adorable and i want to see pictures of everybody in them.

1:44.3

If you get your hat and you get it in the mail, tweet out or Instagram a picture of you in the hat and tag us please so that I can see them and share them with everybody.

1:53.5

I am so touched by everybody that's been buying our little merch.

1:57.7

I'm so proud of us for doing that and I'm so happy that people are enjoying it so much.

2:02.6

So the Pop Pantheon niche legend dad hat is available on our website, Poppantheonpod.com in the shop section.

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