Donna Summer - "Love To Love You Baby" (1975) - Oasis Records
Hello Friends,
Sultry sounds from the turntable tonight!
Love to Love You Baby is not only Donna Summer's first release in the U.S. (her actual first release, Lady of the Night, would only be released in the Netherlands) but it also remains a seminal release in the Disco movement of the 1970's.
The title song takes up all of Side One and boy-oh-boy is it a doozy! A sexy, sultry and sweaty disco opus featuring Giorgio Moroder & Pete Bellotte's sparingly calculated production values with plenty of wah-wah guitar, boogieing bass lines, futuristic-sounding synthesizers and Summer's breathy and sensual vocals with orgasmic moans and ecstatic groans aplenty!
Whereas Side One is an epic of the early disco era, Side Two is a bit of a mixed bag containing more soulful ballads and less speed- and sex-fueled dance tunes.
Immediately, the party comes crashing to halt with the heartbreaking ballad "Full of Emptiness". A great and incredibly sad song sung with unmistakable sincerity by Summer. It does come off as a bit of a buzzkill, however.
"Need-a-Man Blues" gets things (temporarily) back on track with Moroder's signature electro-funk instrumentation doing what it does best lying just below the surface!
"Whispering Waves" is another pretty ballad but ITS KILLING US. Its sounds like a 1970's Massengill commercial! What the hell happened to the spazzy, swirling up-tempo sleaziness of the album's first side?? My boner is slowly turning into tears! (Although, for whatever its worth, there is some pretty nice guitar work going on here.)
Thank god that "Pandora's Box" gets us back to at least a mid-tempo shuffle!! It actually starts out reminding us of Rundgren's "Hello Its Me", but ends up being more of a straightforward R&B song.
The side ends with a country-twinged reprise of "Full of Emptiness" (which would have been an amazing "come down" to the album if everything leading up to it was as high energy as the title track!)
As a whole, this album doesn't really work which is to be expected, historically speaking. Donna Summer was new to the scene as was the genre that she would eventually dominate! Just the fact that a disco/dance track would take up all of a side is pretty amazing (in 1975 the only bands doing this would be prog rock/art rock bands like Yes, Genesis or Pink Floyd!) This album captures her and Moroder in their relative infancy with Love To Love You Baby setting the table for the next half decade or so of greatness!
RATING: 4 do it to me again and again you put me in such an awful spin out of 5
Love to Love You Baby is not only Donna Summer's first release in the U.S. (her actual first release, Lady of the Night, would only be released in the Netherlands) but it also remains a seminal release in the Disco movement of the 1970's.
The title song takes up all of Side One and boy-oh-boy is it a doozy! A sexy, sultry and sweaty disco opus featuring Giorgio Moroder & Pete Bellotte's sparingly calculated production values with plenty of wah-wah guitar, boogieing bass lines, futuristic-sounding synthesizers and Summer's breathy and sensual vocals with orgasmic moans and ecstatic groans aplenty!
Whereas Side One is an epic of the early disco era, Side Two is a bit of a mixed bag containing more soulful ballads and less speed- and sex-fueled dance tunes.
Immediately, the party comes crashing to halt with the heartbreaking ballad "Full of Emptiness". A great and incredibly sad song sung with unmistakable sincerity by Summer. It does come off as a bit of a buzzkill, however.
"Need-a-Man Blues" gets things (temporarily) back on track with Moroder's signature electro-funk instrumentation doing what it does best lying just below the surface!
"Whispering Waves" is another pretty ballad but ITS KILLING US. Its sounds like a 1970's Massengill commercial! What the hell happened to the spazzy, swirling up-tempo sleaziness of the album's first side?? My boner is slowly turning into tears! (Although, for whatever its worth, there is some pretty nice guitar work going on here.)
Thank god that "Pandora's Box" gets us back to at least a mid-tempo shuffle!! It actually starts out reminding us of Rundgren's "Hello Its Me", but ends up being more of a straightforward R&B song.
The side ends with a country-twinged reprise of "Full of Emptiness" (which would have been an amazing "come down" to the album if everything leading up to it was as high energy as the title track!)
As a whole, this album doesn't really work which is to be expected, historically speaking. Donna Summer was new to the scene as was the genre that she would eventually dominate! Just the fact that a disco/dance track would take up all of a side is pretty amazing (in 1975 the only bands doing this would be prog rock/art rock bands like Yes, Genesis or Pink Floyd!) This album captures her and Moroder in their relative infancy with Love To Love You Baby setting the table for the next half decade or so of greatness!
RATING: 4 do it to me again and again you put me in such an awful spin out of 5
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