283. Donna Summer, "Bad Girls"

 


This album was recorded in 1979 and sounds like what if cocaine went to a party at the Playboy Mansion.  It is somehow better and worse than what I expected.

It was obviously meant to be a set-it-and-forget-it party album; there are almost no breaks between songs, so you can throw it on and let it just keep doing its thing, which is pumping out Giorgio Moroder synths and Donna Summer's brassy voice at 120 beats per minute.  You all know, of course, "Hot Stuff" and the prostitution anthem "Bad Girls," the first two songs on the album, and they are both certified bangers.  The rest is, to me anyway, mostly generic disco; I'm sure people with a deeper understanding of dance music would dispute that.  There are a couple of slow jams too.  Gotta have some slow jams in there.

It's a very L.A. album.  In fact, the last song, "Sunset People" is explicitly about people, yes, on Sunset Boulevard.  It's incredibly cheesy, in that 70's way.  (Sample lyrics: "Smooth haired guys thumbing rides/Linin' up from side to side/On sunset, on sunset/In between pretty girls/Still sixteen but know the world/On sunset, on sunset;" what about the rough haired? They don't get to thumb rides?)

Regardless of how you feel about this album (and, as you can divine, I did not especially like it, disco's not really my thing), you have to appreciate Summer's voice.  She really does have a great instrument and a way of owning a melody that you absolutely have to admire.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? I guess so?  Certainly not in my personal 500 but I can appreciate that this was an important album.

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