Donna Summer
Once Upon a Time...

LA RECENSIONE

1977. This album, at least according to me, closes the first part of Donna's discography: following this moderately successful record are the three consecutive number one LPs (one after the other, a record I think is still unbeaten), namely her first live album Live&More, the album Bad Girls driven by the title track and Hot Stuff, and her first Greatest Hits.

After this album, begins the commercially best period for Donna, replicating the success she had with I Feel Love and Love to Love You Baby, which became her most well-known and defining tracks, perhaps against her own wishes. I attempted in another review to reveal the other side of Donna, not the techno side, the singles, the futuristic experiments. And this album, besides being her best LP (and my second favorite album of all time), is an opportunity to listen to songs other than those we are used to remembering Donna by.

As everyone knows, it is a dance concept album in four acts, where the division into acts also means a division between genres, and it is precisely on this structure that I want to base the review, to make it swifter and more concise (since the album has already been reviewed by another user).

The first side is something incredible. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with another album that begins with three bomb tracks: Sgt. Pepper, but this start surpasses everything: in just over ten minutes, the first four songs unfold: unforgettable pearls that almost form a suite with sound coherence. The rhythm is relentless and paranoid, it never stops for a moment and truly serves as a bond between the tail of one track and the beginning of the next. The first track is the album's manifesto, Once Upon a Time, with strings that are not romantic or hyperbolic at all, but very rock, sharp, mischievous, super-fast, and dizzying, along with an epic sax solo. Next up is Trip to Nowhere, the rhythm remains relentless, the atmosphere is electric, the voice is enveloping in this restless interpretation, it's hard to stay still with this and many other songs from the renowned Summer-Moroder-Bellotte team. With Fairy Tale High, the air becomes cloying and fairy-tale-like: all heart. The first act closes with Say Something Nice, where the sweetness is restrained by the rhythm. In these first four songs, which boast excellent melodies, simple yet highly enjoyable in their development, it's worth remembering that Donna's voice and interpretation play a crucial role. I'm not much into performers, but a song by Donna is such also and especially because it is sung by her, regardless of the era we're talking about.

The second act is much less happy, the rhythm slows down, the atmosphere cools, and Donna's voice bends to having to moan over the obsessive and baroque rhythms loved by Moroder. I do not love this type of song, and I can't even love I Feel Love, to be honest.

In the third act, the cards are shuffled: tracks to highlight include If You Got It Flaunt It, which offers yet another new identity to Donna, this time almost funk, very black. Another song is simpler, Sweet Romance, and puts Donna's interpretation at the forefront, which is remarkable and turns this otherwise almost anonymous piece into a track that tears your heart from your chest, that makes you cry and fall in love.

In the last act, among others, we find two singles, I Love You and Rumor Has It. Nothing particular to add.

I discovered this album this summer, and it was an epiphany: one of those 5-10 records that leave a mark, that as you listen to them and gradually learn to know them and fall in love with them, they break away from the history of music to which they belong and get under your skin, never to leave again.