Donna Summer

Singer/songwriter/pop culture icon Donna Summer has been working hard on CRAYONS, her bold and long-awaited new collection of songs, the artist’s first full-length studio album of newly-penned material since 1991’s “Mistaken Identity” and her first new release since “VH1 Presents: Live & More Encore!,” the CD (and DVD) companion to her top-rated VH1 television special which returned her to the Billboard Top 200 in 1999.

Summer, of course, rocketed to international superstardom in the mid-1970s when her groundbreaking merger of R&B, soul, pop, funk, rock, disco and avant-garde electronica catapulted underground dance music out of the clubs of Europe to the pinnacles of sales and radio charts around the world.

Maintaining an unbroken string of hits throughout the 70s and 80s, most of which she wrote, Donna holds the record for most consecutive double albums to hit #1 on the Billboard charts (3) and first female to have four #1 singles in a 12 month period; 3 as a solo artist and one as a duo with Barbra Streisand.

A five-time Grammy winner, Donna Summer was the first artist to win the Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female (1979, “Hot Stuff”) as well as the first-ever recipient of the Grammy for Best Dance Recording (1997, “Carry On”). In 2004, she became one of the first inductees, as both an Artist Inductee and a Record Inductee (for 1977’s “I Feel Love”) into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in New York City. It is estimated that Donna Summer has sold more than 130 million records worldwide.

The arrival of a new Donna Summer album is a major musical event and CRAYONS is a worthy addition to one of the world’s most influential musical catalogs. “I wanted this album to have a lot of different directions on it,” says Donna. “I did not want it to be any one baby. I just wanted it to be a sampler of flavors and influences from all over the world. There’s a touch of this, a little smidgeon of that, a dash of something else … like when you’re cooking.”

CRAYONS, with all its songs co-written by Donna Summer, is an international banquet of musical delights and surprises. The lead-in track, “Stamp Your Feet,” co-written by Summer with Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen, Kylie Minogue, Pink) and Danielle Brisebois (Natasha Bedingfield, New Radicals, Kelly Clarkson), is a powerhouse stadium tub-thumper which, according to Donna, was originally called “The Player’s Anthem.”

“It’s the whole concept of being a player in life, coupled with the idea of being a player on an actual field, the whole thing, dealing with the pain and doing things even though you are afraid. Even though you’re afraid of something and your knees are knocking, you get up and do it because a lot depends on it. Players get taken off to the sidelines and bandaged and thrown back in the game because it depends on them to win the game. We’re all ‘players.’ It goes back to Shakespeare: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’”

Donna especially loves her new song, “Crayons” (also written with Kurstin and Brisebois). “It encompasses a lot of what the album is about,” she says. “Every song is a different color. Since I’m also a visual artist, that title ties a lot of the loose ends of my life together. The song wrote itself pretty quickly. Taking it to the next level, we influence each other in life. You may have an Arab friend or an Israeli friend or an Indian friend and so you go
and eat a little Indian food (or have a little pita bread), or something you’ve never experienced and as we immerse ourselves in each other’s cultural experiences, it’s like taking a crayon and coloring over the lines and the lines become blurred between what’s that and what’s the other.

"You take two colors and create other colors and you add a third color and there’s another color too. That’s how we are in life and that, to me, is a good indication for this album: feeling free to draw between the lines. Everybody gets crayons at some point in their lives, everybody can relate to the basics. It comes down to that child in us, I think there’s a commonality in the concept of ‘Crayons.’”

On “The Queen Is Back,” Donna Summer reveals her wry and witty self-awareness of her musical legacy and her public persona. “I’m making fun of myself,” she admits. “There’s irony, it’s poking fun at the idea of being called a queen. That’s a title that has followed me, followed me, and followed me. We were sitting and writing and that title kept popping up in my mind and I’m thinking, ‘Am I supposed to write this? Is this too arrogant to write?’ But people call me ‘the queen,’ so I guess it’s ok to refer to myself as what everybody else refers to me as. We started writing the song and thought it was kind of cute and funny.”

Donna’s co-writers on “The Queen Is Back,” and on “Mr. Music,” were Jonathan “J.R.” Rotem (Sean Kingston, Rihanna, Leona Lewis) and Evan Bogart, co-author of Rihanna’s “S.O.S,” and the son of Casablanca Records founder, Neil Bogart.
Bogart was the early champion of Donna and her music. He passed away from cancer at the age of 39, after releasing many of Donna’s earliest and most influential hit records.

“I adored him and would have given up everything for him to be alive,” says Donna today, remembering a time backstage long ago “when the nail person didn’t show up and Neil got on his knees and did my toenails. In many ways he was my mentor and I didn’t get to say goodbye to him.” When Donna met Evan Bogart, she was struck by his uncanny resemblance to the label executive. “It’s almost like they chiseled him out of his father,” Donna observed. “I’m in the studio looking at him and I get tears in my eyes, he has no idea why. I just wanted to hug him because it’s like I’m seeing someone I haven’t seen since his father passed away. It’s almost like Neil is looking at me through him. Evan and I hit it off immediately; there was a synergy that happened really quickly.”

That synergy can be heard in “Mr. Music,” a song that Donna says “transforms the moment.” Driving in Florida one night, Donna threw on the track to help her keep awake on the road. “‘Mr. Music,’” she says, “he’s like any DJ, the guy on the radio station, the guy in the DJ booth, the guy that’s changing your moods, the guy that keeps you going, the guy that’s on the radio in the morning when you’re driving. He’s everything you need him to be. Music fast forwards you from one place to another because it takes you away from where you are in a strange way and elevates your mood. When I play ‘Mr. Music,’ it’s euphoric, it’s very happy.”

-http://www.donnasummer.com