Disco de Donna Summer: “Donna Summer Anthology”

Few artists have ever dreamed of covering this range of style and sounds, let alone do it with such command! Virtually every song is a testament to just how important and influential Summer was and still is in the world of popular music. I'd challenge any of today's younger club-set to throw on a tune like Rumour Has It, Bad Girls, or When Love Cries and not take to the floor immediately. This is the epicenter of dance and a whole lot more. Don't forget to take note that Summer also wrote or co-wrote more than a few of these classic hits. Combine that with one of industry's all-time powerhouse voices and it's easy to see why Donna is more than a diva. She's a legend.

Most music anthologies have as many bad tracks on them as good ones, so I was reluctant to buy this album. However, Summer's official greatest hits album ("On The Radio") doesn't have her post-disco hits on it, so I bought the "Donna Summer Anthology" and crossed my fingers.

My gamble paid off. "Anthology" not only contains her familiar hits from later years, but it also contains gems I've never heard before, like "I'm A Rainbow", "I Don't Wanna Get Hurt"--and a surprisingly good rendition of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina".

Donna Summer will never shake her disco legacy, but we often forget this woman has range! "Anthology" proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Forget the hundreds of other--or so it seems--Donna Summer "greatest hits" collections. These cds (there are two in the package) offer the best of Donna Summer from the beginning of her career to the time when she disappeared from the charts. The "cheese" factor is minimal (e.g., "Could It Be Magic"). Even a few songs from "I'm A Rainbow" made in onto this collection (e.g., the title cut and "Don't Cry For Me Argentina"). The second disc demonstrates how Donna Summer changed with the times: "Unconditional Love", "Friends Unkown", and "She Works Hard For The Money." Accept some redundancy, but also groove to some of the best dance music of the 1970's. Highly recommended.

Ten years later, this package sounds just as good if not better now that Donna's music career has spanned to four decades. Thus, it proves that Donna can sing rock (Cold Love), ballad (Friends Unknown), as well as disco (disc 1). As for the song selection, it was wise to include at least one song from her U.S. releases. This recapped her career better for the serious fan (although why the sweet ballad "Winter Melody", #43 pop hit in 1976 is not included I'll never know). You can only find that song from her original album.

For a collection like this, it was great that all these tracks are studio and thus live tracks would have made this Anthology sound uneven.

Obviously, this double-disk Anthology is not for the casual fan since it contains songs that did not make the Billboard charts. Casual fans should stick with the Endless Summer collection instead.

the best summer compilation, featuring ALL of her significant songs, although it remains a mystery WHY 'deep down inside', a big hit in the UK in 1977, is missing again; another objection: why is 'dinner with gershwin', the best song off 'all systems go' and a hit single, missing? instead we get the average title track; otherwise, this compilation shows how summer grew creatively and demonstrates she was far from a producer's puppet; she cowrote almost all songs and is undoubtedly a major vocalist; this compilation also offers more than six minutes of summer's first US chart topper, 'macarthur park', a magnificent song, passionately delivered by summer; as for 'love to love you', we could have had a longer edit, but even today, after 25 years, it's still a VERY erotic song, with that incredibly sexy bassline, and those faux orgasms sound RACY; i can only wonder what it must have been like to hear them on the radio in 1976!!! summer's early songs are actually monotonous disco, unengaging, she really hit her creative stride in 1978, with the glorious 'last dance', one of the best ever disco songs; it's also curious that summer has been labeled the queen of disco when her 70s output was NOT typical disco