Panda Party: RIP Donna Summer Edition

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This week’s Panda Party, I predict some kind of tribute to Donna Summer. It wasn’t just that she was the Queen of Disco, but also that she was part of a larger effort to use disco to push the boundaries of what could be done with pop music. Such as with the notoriously sexy “Love to Love You Baby”.

But it was “I Feel Love” that was largely credited as the song that helped push dance music to the next level, inspiring the explosion of genres and genre-bending that led to techno, Hi-NRG, and house, and all the forms that spun out from there. David Bowie tells a story about that song:

One day in Berlin … Eno came running in and said, ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ … he puts on ‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer … He said, ‘This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.’ Which was more or less right.

He wrote that in 1989,and really, the influence continued further. 

Let’s celebrate all things pop music in today’s Panda Party!