The Season of Summer
When Donna Summer ruled the world…
There were no laptops.
There was no internet.
There were no streaming platforms.
There were LPs, 8-tracks, and cassettes. And dog-eared copies of Seventeen, even if you yourself were not yet 17.
And Pet Rocks. And Charlie’s Angels. And JELLO salads.
And there was D I S C O. Disco music, disco dancing, discotheques, roller disco… and The Disco Handbook, which was available through the Scholastic Book Club when I was in junior high school.
(I may or may not have bought a copy of it. You cannot prove anything.)
When the mirrorballs hung the highest, and D I S C O was at its commercial peak… Donna Summer was its queen.
And that’s how she came to rule the world.
BUT BOSTON-BORN DONNA GAINES MORE THAN CARRIED HER WEIGHT ON THE GLITTERED ROAD TO QUEENDOM…
A European stage presence in the late 60s/early 70s– hear her singing “Wassermann” (“Aquraius”) on the German cast album of Hair in 1968 (she was only 19 at the time!)
Her first singles as Donna Summer– called “The Hostage” and “Lady of the Night”-- were #2 and #4 hits, respectively, in the Netherlands in 1974. (“The Hostage” is a melodramatic story-song reflecting pop styles of the time, while “Lady of the Night” has themes that would resurface in Summer’s later smash hit “Bad Girls.”
Her U.S. and international breakthrough came a year later, when “Love to Love You Baby” was released in late 1975 and eventually hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 (as well as charts in at least 15 other countries)… and the 17-minute version of the song is largely credited with the creation of the 12” single. (And to know anything about this song is to know that it was brimming with controversy… read more about it here.
Her song “I Feel Love” (released in 1977) was an ahead-of-its-time synthesizer masterpiece that is considered instrumental (no pun intended) in the evolution of EDM (electronic dance music).
“Last Dance,” one of her most memorable hits (from an otherwise UNmemorable film called Thank God It’s Friday), won the Academy Award for Best Song and won Summer herself the first of FIVE Grammy Awards.
Though she often co-wrote her songs, “Dim All The Lights” (released in 1979) was written solely by Summer and was part of an incredible string of 7 hits that hit the Top 5 on the Hot 100.
But alas– the figure skating world was decades away from allowing vocals in competitive programs of any kind.
So disco’s sparkle was limited to costumes like 1980 Olympic Silver Medalist Linda Fratianne’s…
… and exhibition programs such as this one from the legendary pairs team Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner (skip to the halfway point in this program to hear what I’m talking about).
I was training competitively myself in the late 70s/early 80s, and remember disco-fied classical pieces like this very well… disco Firebird (called “Magic Bird of Fire”), heard in the Tai & Randy clip… disco Chopin…and of course ““A Fifth of Beethoven”(featured on the Saturday Night Fever OST and a #1 Hot 100 hit on its own in 1976).
Meanwhile, Ms. Summer did something other disco-era artists rarely did… continued her string of pop hits all the way into the mid-1980s with “The Wanderer,” “Love is in Control (Finger on the Trigger),” and “She Works Hard For the Money,” to name a few. That last one proved to be yet another groundbreaker as she became one of the first Black artists (and the first Black woman) to have a music video in heavy rotation on MTV.
Her final significant appearance on the pop charts came with 1989’s Another Place and Time album, which included the Top 10 U.S. hit “This Time I Know It’s For Real.”
She continued to record and perform for the next two decades, but as with most musical superstars, it was her 70s/80s catalog (and in her case, its abundant remixes) that kept people coming back.
In fact (bringing it back to the figure skating world here), the Swiss production Art on Ice made her its headliner in 2011– more than 35 years after her breakout hit. Watch Stephane Lambiel skate to her live performance “Last Dance” (which looks to have closed the show as well).
Sadly, this performance was a swan song of sorts for Summer as she succumbed to lung cancer one year later at age 63. (Though she gave up smoking earlier in her life and believed her illness to come from exposure to the building collapses of 9/11/01 in NYC, this article sheds more light on the possibilities.)
As vocals were permitted in all disciplines of ISU competitions starting in the 2014-15 season– and the options were increasingly explored with each year– I was delighted to finally see “Last Dance” take form in a short program, skated by The Philippines’ Sofia Frank in her international debut at Nebelhorn Trophy in 2021 (choreography by Drew Meekins):
In fact, Frank brought this SP back for the 2024-25 season and skated it as recently as the Four Continents competition in February ‘25. Unfortunately, Frank did not secure the minimum scores needed to compete at Worlds…
But we were treated to a women’s “Last Dance” at Worlds anyway, for Japan’s Mone Chiba picked up the Summer baton too! Her SP is choreographed by Kaitlyn Weaver:
And with social dance music of the 50s, 60s, and 70s comprising the options for 2024-25’s Rhythm Dance, guess which member of dance royalty has graced multiple ice dance programs?
“Love to Love You Baby” is part of the RD for Finnish dance team Yuka Orihara and Juho Pirinen …
And “Last Dance” is the “last” part of the megamix RD used by U.S. dance team Madison Chock and Evan Bates…
And here are TWO all-Donna RDs that were competed this same season—
“Hot Stuff”/”Once Upon A Time”/”I Feel Love”/”No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” used by Czech Republic’s Natálie Taschlerová and Filip Taschler (choreo by Matteo Zanni and Pasquale Camerlengo) …
And “Love to Love You Baby”/”Last Dance” used by Slovakia’s Maria Sofia Pucherova and Nikita Lysak (choreo by Luca Lanotte).
So as you see, Donna Summer’s music is finally having its moment in figure skating and then some.
One question, though: Can it be accepted beyond the realms of a short program (or RD)? Where everything is more sustained… more dramatic… less… fun?
This is where the Live and More album comes in.
I was 10 when I got this 2-disc album for Christmas– three sides of which were dedicated to Summer’s live performance quality and versatility (covering Gershwin and Barbara Streisand as well as her own material). I ate it all up, but was particularly enchanted with side 4…
… one reason being the fact it was called “MacArthur Park Suite”. To that point, I’d only heard of “suites” in the form of ballet music.
But a suite is defined as “a group of things forming a unit or constituting a collection”... and sub-defined as “a modern instrumental composition in several movements of different character” (Merriam-Webster for both).
So while side 4 of Live and More became 18 minutes of continuous dance heaven for those taking to the discotheques of the time… it was 18 minutes of pure melodic delight for little 6th grade me.
And THIS, dear reader, is why I became especially delighted to find USA’s Alysa Liu not only returning to competition in the 2024-25 season, but using “MacArthur Park Suite” for her FS. It has everything– a memorable refrain, engaging rhythm, room for grace, room for powerful energy, fantastic pacing (big props to the choice of cuts chosen for Liu’s program), Jimmy Webb’s intriguing lyrics (“Someone left the cake out in the rain/I don’t think that I can take it/’Cause it took so long to bake it/And I’ll never have that recipe again/Oh no…”)
And of course, that dazzling ending!
(Choreo by Massimo Scali)
“MacArthur Park” was a huge part of Liu’s successful comeback, including two Challenger Series wins, a silver medal at the U.S. Championships, a 4th place at Four Continents… and of course, gold at the 2025 World Championships. But prior to Worlds, I quietly wondered if her choice of what was surely seen as “fun” music was keeping her FS component score from being all it could be.
In fact, Johnny Weir made this comment about Liu’s FS music during NBC’s broadcast of Four Continents Championship:
Donna Summer is FUN, but… it doesn’t give her (Liu) anything. It doesn’t improve her skating.
Thankfully, a few weeks later, in a packed-to-the-rafters TD Garden in Boston…the judges disagreed big time. As well they should have.
Because, as I hope I’ve made clear by now… Donna Summer’s music transcended simplistic definitions. The world “loves to love it” for so many wonderful reasons.
