My thought of it is like two cycles of love, from the perspective of a young girl and a grown-up lady. It gives room for multiple interpretations. The closing track "I Feel Love", with its entirely synthesized backing track, represents the future, and in 1977, Donna could not imagine how far ahead of its time that track was.īut the album's lyrics are also telling a story, although the storyline is not as clear as it would be on, say, "Once Upon A Time". "Take Me" is more or less plain disco whilst "Can We Just Sit Down." is a great ballad (in those days, a rather unseen side of Donna Summer). With "Black Lady", we are in the 70s, the decade in which the album was recorded. The reprise of "I Remember Yesterday" connects past with present. The album starts with some 30s ragtime/charleston flavours ("I Remember Yesterday") and flows via some 50s highschool ("Love's Unkind") into the 60s Supremes-like Motown stomp of "Back In Love Again". This is more or less Donna's musical time machine. Those beautiful Francesco Scavullo album photos would've been suitable for a "Swan Lake" theme as well. She wanted to build a big fantasy album around a disco version of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake Suite", but Neil Bogart could not secure the rights from Tchaikovsky's estate. And, just for the record- "Once Upon A Time" was born from a concept Donna had. I'm sure I'm not the only one who picked up on those titles representing the order they were released. For those who may not have picked up on Donna's sense of humour with these early albums, I'd like to point out that her 1st album (in Germany) was "Lady Of The Night", her second album was "Love 2 Love You Baby", her 3rd was "A Love Trilogy", and her 4th was "Four Seasons Of Love". "Once Upon A Time" was the second concept album, then "I Remember Yesterday". Donna's prior 1976 album "Four Seasons Of Love" was the first concept album. At the top of the page it states that this was Giorgio's first concept album for Donna, but that's incorrect. So for her to be able to record a ballad like this, was as close to belting-out a love song up to that point. In fact, if you look at the early photos and promo ads from 1975 & 1976, it was all about sex, and she was being promoted as "The First Lady Of Love". Donna sings that ballad with her 'normal' voice, as Neil Bogart had preferred her to sing in her upper register/falsetto voice because he wanted to keep the magic going from the first hit "Love To Love You Baby" in which she was being presented as a whispering, sexy 'Love Goddess' kind of singer. The great ballad "Can't We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)" was already recorded by a few artists- David Soul (of "Starsky & Hutch" fame), Linda Lewis, Bill Brandon. They recycled a past song they put out with Donna in 1974 called "Denver Dream", rewrote they lyrics and it became "Back In Love Again". So they put "Once Upon A Time" on hold and quickly put together the "I Remember Yesterday" album with the idea of using songs that represented decades of musical styles- 1930's to 1980's. Giorgio/Pete/Donna had the 2 LP set "Once Upon A Time" ready for release, but when Giorgio played "I Feel Love" for Neil Bogart, President of Casablanca Records, Neil was blown away by the song and the idea that no instruments were used to create that song, just synthesizers, Neil felt that song should be released immediately. This is one of those spur of the moment albums put together in a hurry that became a classic.
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