The Queen of Disco Gets an HBO Documentary

If you were alive in the late ‘70s, you couldn’t escape Donna Summer’s music, and why would you want to? Only the most disco-phobic music fans dismissed her talent, but everyone else was listening to her music on the radio, dancing to her music in queer clubs (and non-queer clubs), skating to her music at the local roller rink -- or making love to her music with the guy they just picked up at a gay bar.

I was in high school in the late ‘70s, when Summer reigned supreme as The Queen of Disco, and I vividly remember her songs being played at school dances and rallies, and wishing I was old enough to go to nightclubs and dance to the iconic music the singer made with her brilliant producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte.

Summer was a complex individual whose career and life are worth revisiting for several reasons. Like other great pop singers from the 20th century – such as Prince, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and Madonna – Summer’s music often fused sexuality and spirituality, sometimes in the same song.

In Summer’s case, her very private personal life was 180 degrees from her suggestive songs and sexy stage persona. She was a devoted mother of three successful daughters and was married to the same man (singer-songwriter Bruce Sudano) for 32 years, until her death in 2012 at the age of 63.

Contradictions make for interesting documentaries, and so it should be fascinating to see how a new HBO documentary premiering this month handles the ironies of Summer’s life and career (a career that paved the way for the electronic dance music of today).

She has a large gay following to this day, and yet Summer was a “born-again Christian” who learned to sing in church as a child and held bible study in her home as an adult, and then transformed into the disco queen on stage, singing about sex in hot hits like “I Feel Love,” “Love to Love You Baby,” “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls” and “Dim All the Lights.”

Controversy followed Summer from the beginning of her career, when a rumor started that she was actually a man, until her lung cancer diagnosis, which the singer (who was a non-smoker) attributed to toxic air she ingested after the twin towers fell in New York City, on 9/11.

There was also the debacle that almost ended her career, which involved Summer telling a gay joke on stage that would probably get a performer canceled today.

(The singer apologized for any hurt she caused, but some fans never forgave her.)

Summer’s alleged homophobia, which she repeatedly denied, is reportedly tackled head on in “Love To Love You, Donna Summer,” the HBO documentary that debuts on May 20. The almost-two-hour movie was directed by Brooklyn Sudano (one of Summer’s daughters) and writerdirector-producer Roger Ross Williams, the first African-American director to win an

by Chris Narloch

Academy Award.

The documentary also includes interviews with Summer’s family and friends, as well as home movies and other archival footage that has never been seen publicly before.

As a fan of the singer for almost fifty years now, I hope the documentary will demonstrate that Donna Summer was a very underrated vocalist and songwriter who could sing pop, rock, gospel, soul, and of course dance music – and did.