Jessie Ware on Donna Summer
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jessie Ware is a singer, songwriter and podcaster. Her latest, critically acclaimed, album, What's Your Pleasure?, draws inspiration from soul, funk, boogie, and disco - and, notably, the work of the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer. Jessie joins Matthew Parris and Pete Bellotte, co-producer and co-writer of many of Donna Summer's biggest hits - I Feel Love, Love to Love You Baby, and Hot Stuff, among others - to explore the life and work of her musical heroine. Jessie, Pete and Matthew discuss Donna's Protean vocal abilities, her eventful childhood and how post-war Munich provided the perfect environment to create some of disco's most momentous hits. Pete reveals how a three-minute demo of Love to Love You Baby became a seventeen-minute breakout hit and together they explore why disco has endured despite an early backlash. Jessie ponders whether life has changed for a woman in the music industry and reflects on Donna's personal legacy. With additional contributions from Danyel Smith, author of Shine Bright: A Personal History of Black Women in Pop (published Spring 2021). Produced in Bristol by Camellia Sinclair
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan |
| 0:05.2 | I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy |
| 0:10.2 | podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really. |
| 0:13.0 | Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh, |
| 0:18.0 | making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things. |
| 0:22.0 | But you know I also know that comedy is really |
| 0:24.4 | subjective and everyone has different tastes so we've got a huge range of comedy on offer |
| 0:29.6 | from satire to silly shocking to soothing profound to just general pratting about. So if you |
| 0:36.2 | fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:41.6 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:46.0 | Every once in a while, a piece of music comes along, |
| 0:49.1 | which shakes the foundations of music history. The year is 1977 and such a song has just arrived. |
| 0:57.0 | In Berlin, musician Brian Eno rushes into the recording studio to tell David Bowie, |
| 1:03.0 | This is it, Look No Further. |
| 1:05.0 | Meanwhile, John Lennon locks himself in a room |
| 1:08.0 | to listen to the song over and over again. |
| 1:11.0 | He declares, this is the future. The song is the creation of a tried |
| 1:16.3 | and tested trio of songwriters, the final record on their fifth album. It's an experiment, a song which imagines the future, synthesizes white noise |
| 1:26.6 | above it all a single voice. It's angelic, ethereal. And that voice belongs to today's subject, the singer, songwriter, and Queen of |
| 1:37.2 | Disco, Donna Sommer. |
| 1:39.5 | And she's the choice of the |
| 1:45.0 | choice of the singer, songwriter and podcaster Jesse Ware. Her latest album, What's Your Pleasure, |
... |
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