It's Summer's disco music that has best withstood the passing time in my opinion. The dance anthem I Feel Love and the soaring fast-paced MacArthur Park are representative of her versatility in the middle to late 1970s, whilst rock guitar infuse Hot Stuff and Bad Girls with an urgency & gravitas that disempowered the foes of disco. The 1979 album
Bad Girls was a triumph with its electro-pop tracks Our Love, Lucky & Sunset People plus moving ballads like On My Honor & There Will Always Be A You.
The greatest hits on The Journey include the plaintive ballad On The Radio, the up-tempo albeit tuneless duet with Streisand as well as a variety of pop songs in different styles. She Works Hard For The Money is a mid-80s stomper; the then-famous producers Stock, Aitken, Waterman gave Donna a well-deserved hit with the breezy This Time I Know It's For Real at the end of that decade. The most interesting are the two
Quincy Jones produced tracks Love Is In Control & even more so,
State of Independence with its complex yet appealing arrangement & sublime vocals.
The bonus disc contains more magic, particularly the original long version of Love to Love You Baby and two striking mixes of I Feel Love & Hot Stuff. This compilation is just a sampler of Donna Summer's huge contribution to popular music since the 1970s, but still a good showcase of some of her most memorable moments. There's a variety of Best Of & Greatest Hits collections; fans that prefer her disco phase might be more interested in
The Dance Collection that contains the entire MacArthur Park Suite.