Customer Reviews

Anthology

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Admitting to liking Donna Summer seems like something one should do at a 12 step meeting, or at least while wearing a hat and shades. She , more than any singer, was so perfect in one place and time, it's amazing that, almost 30 years later, most of her music sounds fresh and timeless.
DS was never a tier one singer (a spot reserved for the diva trinity of ReeRee, Chaka and Gladys), but the material Summer recorded was, in retrospect, absolute perfect for her voice. This two record collection is a healthy reminder of that. Disc One (the better of the two, by far) is an assemblage of monster dance hits, from Love To Love You Baby (editied down, mercifully to a brilliant 4 minutes) through the "Bad Girls" session. There is no reason to hit skip on any of these selections. "Try Me I Know We Can Make It" sounds wonderfully fresh, "Rumour Has it" and "I Love You" (from the best 2 record disc by a female in the 70's) still sound joyful. And the knockout punch of "I Feel Love" is a reminder that Moby, the Chem Bros. and the entire electronic generation owe Giorgio Moroder their careers.
Disc Two, while weaker in overall presentation, still has more highlights than a natural brunette with a bottle of Sun-In. The forgotten "Unconditional Love" (with duet partner Musical Youth) is a reggae-tinged joy inducer. "The Wanderer" rocks, "She Works Hard For The Money" rolls, and "This Time I Know It's For Real" is just a killer dance track. You can tell, when listening to disc 2 that Donna and Giorgio worked best with each other (just like Chaka and Arif and Diana R. and Berry, the great soul singers of our time always hit creative peaks with a certain producer that they never seemed to capture with others).
One minor gripe - missing from this collection is onna's finest post-Casablance single, "Dinner With Gershwin".
This is a CD for convertible-owners, and sounds great with the top down on a warm summer evening. Give side one the bass-boost for a real rockin trip down Disco Lane.

Few artists have ever dreamed of covering this range of style and sounds, let alone do it with such command! Virtually every song is a testament to just how important and influential Summer was and still is in the world of popular music. I'd challenge any of today's younger club-set to throw on a tune like Rumour Has It, Bad Girls, or When Love Cries and not take to the floor immediately. This is the epicenter of dance and a whole lot more. Don't forget to take note that Summer also wrote or co-wrote more than a few of these classic hits. Combine that with one of industry's all-time powerhouse voices and it's easy to see why Donna is more than a diva. She's a legend.

This is the perfect collection of hits. From the sexy "Love to Love you Baby" to her last full length album "Mistaken Identity" which has the r&b hit "When Love Cries". She also gives a new song "Carry On", which is a great dance song. I just wish that she would stop releasing greatest hits packages with only 2 new songs and release another full-length album. Don't waste your money on the other packages. If you want all her hits from day one get this one.

Most music anthologies have as many bad tracks on them as good ones, so I was reluctant to buy this album. However, Summer's official greatest hits album ("On The Radio") doesn't have her post-disco hits on it, so I bought the "Donna Summer Anthology" and crossed my fingers.

My gamble paid off. "Anthology" not only contains her familiar hits from later years, but it also contains gems I've never heard before, like "I'm A Rainbow", "I Don't Wanna Get Hurt"--and a surprisingly good rendition of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina".

Donna Summer will never shake her disco legacy, but we often forget this woman has range! "Anthology" proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I just wanted to point out that this collection actually features some edits not available elsewhere -- they were created specifically for this package. If you are looking for the single edits or the full album or 12" versions, you may be disappointed with this package. For example, MacArthur Park and Last Dance -- two of her biggest hits in the US -- are both newly edited. I happen to like these new edits, but I would be disappointed if I didn't have the original edits elsewhere.

For a non-collector that doesn't really care whether the songs are slightly different than he/she may remember, this is an excellent compilation. This is still an excellent compilation for Donna Summer collectors, hence I give it 5 stars. But everyone should be aware that, in some cases, the versions of the songs contained in this package are not those that were originally issued.

Oddly enough, the ONLY cd on which I've found the original single edit of "I Love You" is the European pressing of "Endless Summer -- Donna Summer Greatest Hits", which contains a slightly different track listing than the US disc of the same name. The only place I've found the approximately 5-minute, original single version of "Love To Love You Baby" is on a Time Life "Sounds Of the Seventies" compilation of hits of 1976.

Edit on October 2005:

The single edits of "I Love You" and "Love To Love You Baby" have finally shown up in another collection, Donna Summer "Gold."

Forget the hundreds of other--or so it seems--Donna Summer "greatest hits" collections. These cds (there are two in the package) offer the best of Donna Summer from the beginning of her career to the time when she disappeared from the charts. The "cheese" factor is minimal (e.g., "Could It Be Magic"). Even a few songs from "I'm A Rainbow" made in onto this collection (e.g., the title cut and "Don't Cry For Me Argentina"). The second disc demonstrates how Donna Summer changed with the times: "Unconditional Love", "Friends Unkown", and "She Works Hard For The Money." Accept some redundancy, but also groove to some of the best dance music of the 1970's. Highly recommended.

If you love disco, or just plain great vocals, Donna Summer's Anthology 2 CD set is for you!

If you want to buy one Donna Summer album, this is definitely the one to get. It has most every major hit that she sang, plus some other gems thrown in for good measure.

What sold me on Anthology, was the album length cuts that were included of the hits. It is often the case that Greatest Hits CDs contain truncated or single edit versions of songs in order to fit more titles on a disc. With Anthology, they didn't cut any corners.

The sound quality is very good and you'll be pleased with how many recognizable tunes this Disco diva hit the charts with.

Well worth the little extra for a superb 2 CD set that chronicles one of the most influential artists of the disco era and beyond.

Ten years later, this package sounds just as good if not better now that Donna's music career has spanned to four decades. Thus, it proves that Donna can sing rock (Cold Love), ballad (Friends Unknown), as well as disco (disc 1). As for the song selection, it was wise to include at least one song from her U.S. releases. This recapped her career better for the serious fan (although why the sweet ballad "Winter Melody", #43 pop hit in 1976 is not included I'll never know). You can only find that song from her original album.
For a collection like this, it was great that all these tracks are studio and thus live tracks would have made this Anthology sound uneven.
Obviously, this double-disk Anthology is not for the casual fan since it contains songs that did not make the Billboard charts. Casual fans should stick with the Endless Summer collection instead.

This is the perfect Donna Summer collection for any novice or fan. If I had to make a painful choice of choosing only one Summer title and getting rid of the rest, this would be the one to take to a desert island !

The only minor drawback is the exclusion of the following songs: Dinner With Gershwin,Fascination, The Woman In Me, I Remember Yesterday.Even the inclusion of her pre-Love to Love You Baby phase material (Donna's European release from '74 album Lady Of The Night)would have been a great bonus. These tracks were not included probably for 2 reasons; chart position and lack of room on c.d. to fit material (3rd c.d. would not have been cost effective for only a few songs).Majority of the tracks are in their 7" single time length formats.

The booklet included is jam packed with various colorful photos (some never seen by the public before) that span her early 70's emergence to the early 90's. The biography is very informative in describing her humble beginnings period to the mega star period . It also gives insight to the writing process and inspiration behind some of the music.

Donna Summer's Anthology is not only a superb collection but a great bargain !

the best summer compilation, featuring ALL of her significant songs, although it remains a mystery WHY 'deep down inside', a big hit in the UK in 1977, is missing again; another objection: why is 'dinner with gershwin', the best song off 'all systems go' and a hit single, missing? instead we get the average title track; otherwise, this compilation shows how summer grew creatively and demonstrates she was far from a producer's puppet; she cowrote almost all songs and is undoubtedly a major vocalist; this compilation also offers more than six minutes of summer's first US chart topper, 'macarthur park', a magnificent song, passionately delivered by summer; as for 'love to love you', we could have had a longer edit, but even today, after 25 years, it's still a VERY erotic song, with that incredibly sexy bassline, and those faux orgasms sound RACY; i can only wonder what it must have been like to hear them on the radio in 1976!!! summer's early songs are actually monotonous disco, unengaging, she really hit her creative stride in 1978, with the glorious 'last dance', one of the best ever disco songs; it's also curious that summer has been labeled the queen of disco when her 70s output was NOT typical disco