Donna Summer Bad Girls CD

Largely regarded as Donna Summer's rock & roll album, thanks to some hot guitars mixed in with the synthesizers, 1979's BAD GIRLS mostly sounds like an indication of the way mainstream pop music would sound in the 1980s. It's hard to imagine Michael Jackson's THRILLER, David Bowie's LET'S DANCE or Madonna's LIKE A VIRGIN without this punchy and enormously successful blend of dancefloor heat, rock & roll cool, and smart pop songwriting.

Starting off with the killer one-two punch of "Hot Stuff" and the title track--possibly Summer's two best songs ever--the rest of the 70-minute-plus CD (originally a double album) features a handful of exceptional, dramatic ballads and some pure dance music in the mode of earlier hits like "I Feel Love." Though the songs are still lengthy, the arrangements are tighter and poppier than before. BAD GIRLS is a disco-rock classic.

BAD GIRLS (1979) is Donna Summer's musical peak, one of the first albums to bridge the seemingly impassable divide between disco and rock. To a latter-day audience familiar with Prince, Madonna, Duran Duran, and others who built on this album's pioneering synthesis, it might be hard to imagine just how "ne'er the twain shall meet" the rock and disco audiences were at the end of the '70s. However, Summer and her primary collaborators Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, along with new team member Harold Faltermeyer, added some guitars, pop hooks, and rock beats to their typical electronic pulse, and the mixture resulted in four chart hits, including the immortal "Hot Stuff." This 2003 reissue adds a bonus disc called 12" SINGLES & MORE, which collects all of Summer's best extended mixes, from the genre-defining "I Feel Love" and the over-the-top 18-minute "Mac Arthur Park Suite" to her later hits "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" (a duet with Barbra Streisand) and "On the Radio."

Live Recording

Recorded at Rusk Sound Studio and Westlake Studios, Los Angeles, California; Musicland Studios and Arco Studios, Munich, Germany; Record Plant Studios, New York, New York between 1977 & 1979.

Recorded at Rusk Sound Studio, Los Angeles, California.

BAD GIRLS: DELUXE EDITION contains a remastered BAD GIRLS plus a bonus disc of 12" singles.

Personnel includes: Donna Summer (vocals); Brooklyn Dreams (vocals); Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, Jay Graydon, Paul Jackson, Jr., Ben Benay (guitar); Al Perkins (pedal steel guitar); Gary Herbig (saxophone); Steve Madaio, Jerry Hey, Gary Grant (trumpet); Dick Hyde, Bill Reichenbach (trombone); Harold Faltermeyer, Bruce Roberts (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, keyboards, synthesizer, bass); Jai Winding (piano); Greg Mathieson, Don Gregorio (keyboards);Scott Edwards, Bob Glaub, Mike Porcaro (bass); Keith Forsey (drums, percussion); Stephanie Spruill, Maxine L. Willard, Julia Tillman (background vocals).

Producers: Giorgio Moroder, Pete Bellote, Gary Klein, Bill Levenson.

Personnel includes: Donna Summer (vocals); Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, Paul Jackson, Jr. (guitar); Al Perkins (pedal steel guitar); Gary Herbig (saxophone); Steve Madaio, Jerry Hey (trumpet); Slide Hyde (trombone); Jai Winding (piano); Harold Faltermeyer (keyboards, synthesizer, bass); Bob Gaudio (bass); Keith Forsey (drums, percussion).

Rolling Stone - 3 Stars - Good
Rolling Stone (8/21/03, p.78) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...[She] was creating a new idea of international pop....Summer and [producer Giorgio] Moroder showed how dance music could kick like the meanest real-time rock & roll....it's just about unimproveable."
Q (11/03, p.138) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...[The album] possessed enough strutting pop suss to take it far beyond the dancefloor..."