Donna Summer Album: “Love To Love You Baby”

Donna's first USA album was and will always be most notable for the full 17 minute orgasmic symphony of Love to Love You Baby.

This song would start her career YET, it would be her later Disco/Pop crossover songs that would launch her into superstardom.

The title track filled all of side 1, and the sad part is many people did not bother to listen to side 2. Side 2 is very similar to the work Donna did on her first ever album, Lady of The Night (released in Europe), and all of the tracks here are winners. The side starts and finishes with Full of Emptiness, and includes Need A Man Blues (later covered by The Bronski Beat), Whispering Waves, and the great folk song Pandora's Box.

Listen to the entire release and Love To Love It!

To say it has been a long time coming that Universal Music upgrade Donna Summer's early catalog is an understatement It has been in most cases (except for Bad Girls given an upgrade in 2003 with a Deluxe Edition) 20 years or more. And of course it takes Universal Music Japan to do so. Come on Universal Music U.S.A.! Despite the exceedingly high prices for these Japanese titles, her first CD Love to Love You Baby sounds refreshed and I was struck by the improvement. The difference is especially heard on the tracks that follow the 16 minute version of Love to Love You...Improved sonics such as bass and I even heard some instrumentation I hadn't heard on the older CD. The CD also comes with a fold out white insert complete with English lyrics and Japanese lyrics. On this insert it clearly says "24 bit remastering." I think there had been some question whether this CD and the other 7 titles reissued (I Remember Yesterday, Love Trilogy, Four Seasons of Love, Once Upon A Time, Live & More, Bad Girls and On the Radio Vols. 1 & 2) were remastered. Well based on this title, to me is sounds like the answer is yes. I look forward to hearing the others when they arrive. Happy listening to all you Donna Summer fans. Donna R.I.P. your music lives on sounding better than ever.

"After further exploration of her 70s music, I learned about a 17-minute version of 'Love to Love you Baby'...SEVENTEEN MINUTES....I've never heard of a remix that long, hence my curiosity. So this album was a MUST HAVE, and it's not on another other Donna compilations (that I know of.) Once I got the CD and heard the remix, I loved it...although I imagined more lyrics and more Donna moaning, but it wasn't....they just added about one or two minutes of Donna moaning and a LOT more instrumentals to the song...still it was NO disappoinment."

I think it would be in J. Ahern's best interest to know that the 16 minute, 48 second version of Love to Love You Baby is NOT a REMIX, but the ORIGINAL.

Ahem...Now, onto my comments about this album.

I'm a youngster, too -- only 26 years old -- and I have an affinity for classic music such as that of Mrs. Summer's (nee Gaines). I came across this song for the first time while cleaning up the living room one day when I was about 11. I played it, and blushed at first because of the suggestiveness of the song, but I was strangely hypnotized by the music and the trance hasn't yet been broken.

I agree with some of the other reviewers when they say that the other songs on the album are a bit second-rate, but I can't help but like Pandora's Box.

All in all, though, LTLYB is a timeless classic.

Donna Summer's 1975 album is a must-have for the glorious 17-minute "Love to Love You Baby" - her sexually-charged Eurodisco collaboration with producer-songwriters Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. A worldwide smash, this unedited masterpiece remains among the crown jewels in the Summer catalog. The tracks on Side Two pale by comparison, but who's complaining?

What a short-length album with a long lasting impact ! Each song is stylistically different and just as intoxicating as the previous one. From the 16 minutes plus of moans and groans in the title track to the blues-jazz-gospel inflected Pandora's Box, Donna proved she was more (vocally) than just a moaner. With her background training in gospel music and her previous experience in Europe performing in the German-production of the musical Hair she was destined to make it big on her sheer vocal talent. The track Full of Emptiness (even without music videos at that time) comes across as a song sung by a woman who is lonely or broken hearted ; She's drinking her sorrows down at the local dive or bar in solitude. The hauntingly fragile and melancholy drifting sound of Whispering Waves takes the listener to that lonely beach with grey clouds and a fine mist in the air during the early or evening hours. Love to Love You was more than just a fad or disco album;It was also visual !