Word: disco
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What she's got, most prominently, is a first-rate set of pipes, a ringing, theatrical voice that is locked in continual combat with the layered sound and dunce-cap lyrics of disco. With one platinum and five gold albums, Summer, 29, is the one incontestable star to emerge from the disco demimonde. Love to Love You Baby became a hit in the days when discos were not sprouting on every block, but were stashed in the closet along with the gay subculture from which they sprang...
...song's smash success coincided with disco's coming-out party, and became a kind of marching song for the disco revolution. Donna continues to ride high and handsome as the craze vaults all class barriers, from blue-collar to café society. Still big in the clubs, she has worked up a concert act that she is currently taking through 14 cities before invading the citadel, Las Vegas. Eager to wade into the musical mainstream, Donna dusts off The Man I Love and Some of These Days and presses them into a stage extravaganza that doesn't yield an inch...
...like confetti, Donna sashays around the stage in glittering costumes, exhorting the audience ("You are beautiful"), joshing the band, trading a little prefabricated bitchiness with her backup singers who undulate at sharp angles like clockwork Nefertitis when Donna wraps herself around a lyric. "I do not consider myself a disco artist," Donna insists, against all contrary evidence. "I consider myself a singer who does disco songs. What I like to do is expose my market to other parts of music...
Donna's market is as broad as her expectations. After an appearance in a disco showcase quickie called Thank God It's Friday, she is primed to act. As she told TIME'S Edward Adler, "I don't have to take coaching. I can act. All I have to do is be myself playing someone else. I could be a Bette Davis-type actress. Catty, cold, precise and domineering...
...French, very clear schoolbook French, with an English translation generously supplied on the sleeve. Along with the haunting words ("Such sad dreams/Troubling my sleep with that howl/Farewells must be but au revoirs"), and a charming french cabaret flavor, "Pronto Monto" is all variety. There's a brief transition to disco at the end of the song, French disco, and mysterious strains of mandolin, violin and horn floating in and out of the music. "Pronto Monto" embodies everything good about the McGarrigle sisters, especially because the words briefly recall the sister-conscious character of their old greats...