“Hot Stuff” (Donna Summer)

It’s almost impossible to talk about the disco craze of the late ’70s without talking about Donna Summer, the undisputed Queen of Disco. To that end, today’s classic disco song of the day is Ms. Summer’s “Hot Stuff.” Released in April of 1979, this monster worldwide hit peaked at #1 in Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and, in the U.S., on the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard Dance Club Songs, and Cash Box Top 100 charts. It was also a Top 10 hit in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and West Germany.

“Hot Stuff” was written by a team of songwriters (Pete Bellotte, Harold Faltermeyer, and Keith Forsey) and produced by Bellotte and Giorgio Moroder, the so-called Father of Disco. This particular track augmented the normal disco arrangement with a bit of rock and roll guitar, supplied by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan). It won Ms. Summer a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, beating out Rickie Lee Jones, Bonnie Raitt, Carly Simon, Tanya Tucker, and somebody named Cindy Bullens. (Who?)

Donna Summer started out singing in musicals and doing duty as a background singer. She met misters Bellotte and Moroder when recording a session for Three Dog Night in Munich and they signed her to their Oasis label in 1974. Her first album, Lady of the Night, was a hit in Europe, but it was her orgasmic 1975 track, “Love to Love You Baby,” that provided her breakthrough in the States and elsewhere. A stream of hits followed, including “I Feel Love” (#6 on the Hot 100), “Last Dance” (#3), a disco cover of Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park” (#1), “Heaven Knows” (#4), “Bad Girls” (#1), “Dim All the Lights” (#2), “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” (#1), “On the Radio” (#5), “The Wanderer” (#3), “Love is In Control (Finger on the Trigger)” (#10), “She Works Hard for the Money” (#3), and “This Time I Know It’s for Real” (#7). Those were just her mainstream hits; she had at least twice as many songs that dominated the dance charts. Pretty hot stuff, for sure.

Given how we’ve tried to wipe the disco craze from our collective musical memory, many have forgotten just how much Donna Summer dominated the charts and the dance floors back then. She, guided by Bellotte and Moroder, really knew how to put together a winning package. They were decent songs with an infectious beat, delivered convincingly by a talented singer. It’s hard to go wrong with that kind of combination.

The disco craze petered out by the early ’80s but Donna Summer kept recording and performing well into the current century. She passed away in 2012 of lung cancer, just 63 years old.