Happy 40th Anniversary to Donna Summer’s eighth studio album The Wanderer, originally released October 20, 1980.
After nearly a decade of groundbreaking moves, disco’s leading lady Donna Summer advanced with her seventh and most ambitious long player up to that point, Bad Girls (1979). Three of its singles—“Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls” and “Dim All the Lights”—dominated the airwaves and charts throughout 1979 and dressed the table for On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II. The luxe compilation, a double album, corralled all of Summer’s biggest singles from the 1970s—additionally, the package contained two new songs (and soon-to-be smashes): the title track and “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).” The latter selection was a showstopping duet with the inimitable Barbra Streisand; the team-up also appeared on Streisand’s own twenty-first LP, Wet (1979).
By early 1980, Summer had logged three number-one double albums stateside with On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II, Bad Girls and Live and More (1978)—a record Summer retains today. With a whole new decade spread out before her, Summer was poised for further greatness—but there were professional and personal shifts ahead for her too.
Behind the scenes of a seemingly fortuitous business relationship, communication had broken down between Casablanca Records magnate Neil Bogart and Summer; Summer had hung her hat at Casablanca for several years as their star attraction. A considerable portion of the conflict could be put down to royalty disbursement and the like, but the sizable sticking point for Summer ultimately wasn’t financial, it was artistic.
Bogart had sought to confine the singer and songwriter to the “First Lady of Love” persona she’d drafted years earlier in service to her charter “Love to Love You Baby.” Seeking to challenge herself creatively, Summer knew that she could not stay at Casablanca. While not owed completely to Summer’s rediscovery of her Christian faith in late 1979, one cannot deny that her spiritual renewal likely spurred her onward to break out of the rigidity of that erotic caricature.
It was during this season of change that Summer encountered David Geffen, the music industry maverick who parlayed his appreciable resources into his own record label. Geffen suggested a pairing between himself and Summer—he would supply her with unilateral control of her product, and she would legitimize his fledgling imprint as his initial recruit. Summer eagerly accepted the terms and conditions of what ended up as a seven-year deal with Geffen Records.
Her subsequent exit from Casablanca was acrimonious. Casablanca continued to pump Summer related stock into the marketplace in a bid to presumably oversaturate and diminish enthusiasm for whatever forthcoming project she was cutting for Geffen’s company. This ploy culminated in the crude, cash-grab issuance of a second singles collection, Walk Away - Collector's Edition: The Best of 1977-1980 (1980).
Listen to the Album:
Once Geffen caught wind of this campaign, he requested that Summer action work on her follow-up to Bad Girls post haste. Flush with a ceaseless amount of inventive energy that required an outlet, Summer more than obliged Geffen’s entreaty—she dove headfirst into the scripting and recording of The Wanderer, her eighth long player. Joining Summer once again to produce and pen on the set were stalwarts Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte; additional writing and session musician input came courtesy of an intimate clique of creatives that included Harold Faltermeyer, Keith Forsey, Sylvester Levay and Jerry Rix. Summer herself didn’t shirk on the songwriting: five out of the ten sides that comprise The Wanderer feature Summer as either a lead writer or a co-writer.
Even on the other five selections Summer didn’t write, she provided the thematic compass that she wanted her colleagues to unflinchingly adhere to. Dating back to “Lady of the Night”—the title song of her 1974 debut effort—up through Once Upon a Time (1977) and Bad Girls, the modern woman remained a recurring leitmotif for Summer. With The Wanderer, she sought to take this concept to the next level and lend credence to the LP’s enterprising designation. Summer roots the narrative of the record in the journey of a nameless young woman duly escaping the confines of her small-town existence for the lure of big city living—replete with all the dramatic trimmings.
From the jittery excitement of “The Wanderer,” around to the fear of the unknown highlighted on “Running For Cover,” and back over to the nocturnal temptations extolled via “Nightlife,” Summer sketches an enthralling cityscape as a storytelling backdrop linked through these entries and others on the wax.
On vivid pieces like “Looking Up” and “I Believe in Jesus,” Summer sources their tales from a place inside. Whether exploring amative love to combat the woes of daily living on the former jam or seeking sacrosanct deliverance on the latter cut, Summer’s lived experiences of the last few years lent a strikingly autobiographical subtext to The Wanderer. It cannot be overstated that the potency of all the song scripts housed on the album are down to how Summer renders them.
The chameleonic power emblematic of her vocal instrument is on deft display throughout this song cycle. No one performance here was the same as the other, however, Summer scaled new heights of expression on the sirenic “Grand Illusion” and the brawny “Cold Love” which showcased just how versatile of a singer Summer was.
And then there was the music of The Wanderer itself—a vigorous blend of semi-synth driven rock & roll grooves, irrepressible pop melodies and a few other surprises. The flashier disco of her preceding material always masked the wider pop experimentation inherent to Summer’s art; the rock-disco fusion of Bad Girls was the first indicator that Summer was ready to reveal a different kind of approach going forward.
This evolution happened incidentally alongside a metastasizing backlash toward disco that reached a violent climax with the infamous “Disco Demolition Night” at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois—as led by the despicable shock jock, Steve Dahl. The event—which occurred barely three months removed from the issuance of Bad Girls—pulled forth all of the sexist, racist, homophobic sentiment fueling the anti-disco movement into full view of the public. It is within this framework of understanding that the subversive triumph of Summer usurping the rock field—assumed to be the exclusive province of straight white men—with The Wanderer comes sharply into view. The irony was both masterful and delicious.
Thusly, conventional dance music was not employed on this album—but just because Summer had taken hold of guitar-oriented sounds didn’t mean that she had totally abdicated rhythm altogether. The soulful shuffle of “Breakdown” and the kinetic fervor of “Who Do You Think You’re Foolin’” were politely danceable affairs if not traditional floorfillers. In this regard, the cocky quip of “Stop me! Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one, this one!”—also doubling as the hook for the incendiary “Stop Me”—can be recognized as a coy challenge to anyone (enthusiast or detractor) that dared to question Summer’s current incarnation—no one had ever heard Summer like this before.
Weeks ahead of its parent project, “The Wanderer” arrived on the desks of radio programmers nationwide in September of 1980. The fizzy new wave single wowed the members of the music press, smashed into the charts, and went on to be a gold seller. But for a sect of Summer’s base—and the broader disco constituency enamored with her previous fare—this (then) recent musical makeover left them cold.
The Wanderer debuted to some of the strongest notices of Summer’s career upon its release on October 20th, 1980. Yet, the LP only went gold—that Summer had leapfrogged out of one arena (where she was the dominant force) and into another (where she was an unknown commodity) so rapidly was a reasonable cause for the slight sales downturn. Further, as a black woman in the mainstream rock sphere of the period, no matter how good her record was, the gatekeepers of that sonic space were not going to allow Summer but so much access to it.
At the conclusion of its promotional lifespan, The Wanderer produced two more singles in “Cold Love” and “Who Do You Think You’re Foolin”; “Cold Love” brought Summer a GRAMMY Award nomination in 1982 for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance—she had made history in 1980 in this same GRAMMY category when it was inaugurated and Summer became its first recipient. Another GRAMMY nomination also came her way for one of the LP’s deep cuts, “I Believe in Jesus”: Best Inspirational Performance.
Accolades and charts aside, The Wanderer was an impressive introduction to the second arc of Summer’s recording career to be defined over the next decade by a boundless experimentalism which affirmed that she was far more than the “Queen of Disco,” she was an architect of the transformative pop genre model.
Having gotten her start by, effectively, creating her own dance-pop method as a means to launch herself into the popular music consciousness, Summer then pivoted from said practice to demonstrate that she could create within any mold that she so desired—as only a true artist could. Summer’s blueprint later informed the output of Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga and many other women to follow in her footsteps when it came time to show that they could exist (and thrive) off of the dancefloor.
Today, The Wanderer continues to thrill new audiences—evidence of the staying power of Donna Summer’s legacy as a pioneer unafraid to venture forward into territories others would not dare to tread.
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