Donna Summer

LaDonna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012), known by her stage name Donna Summer, was an American singer, songwriter, and painter. She gained prominence during the disco era of the late-1970s. A five-time Grammy Award winner, she was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach No. 1 on the United States Billboard album chart and charted four number-one singles in the U.S. within a 12-month period. Summer has reportedly sold over 140 million records, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time.

While influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s, she became the front singer of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and moved to New York City. Joining a touring version of the musical Hair, she left New York and spent several years living, acting, and singing in Europe, where she met music producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte.

Summer returned to the U.S., in 1975 with commercial success of the song 'Love to Love You Baby', followed by a string of other hits, such as "I Feel Love", "Last Dance", "MacArthur Park", "Heaven Knows", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" (duet with Barbra Streisand), and "On the Radio". She became known as the "Queen of Disco", while her music gained a global following.

Donna Summer (album)

Donna Summer is the tenth studio album of American singer Donna Summer, released in 1982. It featured the Top 10, Grammy-nominated "Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)" single.

Back story

Having left Casablanca Records, with whom she had had some of the biggest selling and most popular hits of the disco era in the 1970s, Summer had signed to Geffen Records in 1980 and had continued working with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, with whom she had written the vast majority of her hits. However, label owner David Geffen had been disappointed with the chart performance of The Wanderer, Summer's debut album for Geffen and rather than release the followup; I'm a Rainbow which Summer had recorded with Moroder/Bellotte, Geffen had Summer record a new album with Quincy Jones from whom a production credit - given Jones' track record particularly his work with Michael Jackson - Geffen felt would guarantee a commercial smash. The resultant Donna Summer album was the first time the singer had worked with a producer other than Moroder and Bellotte since 1974 save for the one-off track "Down Deep Inside (Theme from "The Deep")" which was produced by John Barry for the film The Deep, and the No More Tears (Enough is Enough) duet with Streisand which was co-produced by Gary Klein of The Entertainment Company.

The Wanderer (Donna Summer album)

The Wanderer is the eighth studio album by Donna Summer, released in 1980. It was her first release on Geffen Records and became a Top 20 album in the United States, with the title track single reaching the #3 on Billboard's Hot 100.

This album had been out of print but was re-released on December 9, 2014, on the Driven by the Music label (remastered/bonus tracks).

Background

Summer had made her name the previous decade as the most successful female artist of the disco genre, releasing a vast selection of hit singles and albums on Casablanca Records. During this period however, Summer had felt that the label had exploited her and made her portray a sexually orientated image ("The First Lady of Love") with which she never felt comfortable. The label had also taken over other elements of Summer's personal life, to the point where she felt she had no control over her life or career. Having come out of a period of depression and rediscovering her Christian faith, Summer had made the decision to break away from Casablanca and file a lawsuit against them. After the lawsuit was eventually settled, Summer became the first artist to be signed to the newly established Geffen Records.

Wanderer

Wanderer, Wanderers, or The Wanderer may refer to:

• A homeless man or woman who trolls dating websites for lonely people in order to find a free place to stay

The Wanderer (Maykov poem)

The Wanderer (Strannik, Стра′нник) is a poem by Apollon Maykov, first published in the No.1, January 1867 issue of The Russian Messenger. It was dedicated to Fyodor Tyutchev and subtitled: "First part of the drama The Thirsty One".

History

In his commentaries to the first, magazine version of the poem, Maykov explained:

In the same commentaries the author mentioned several of the sources he used: The Historical Sketches of Russian Priesthood by Pavel Melnikov (part 1, Moscow, 1864), Stories from the History of the Old Believers by S.Maksimov (Saint-Petersburg, 1861), Songs Collected by P.V. Kireevsky (4th issue, Moscow, 1862), works by the raskol scholar N.I.Subbotin. Working upon the language, he studied Avvakum's literary legacy and some old Russian Bible-based texts.

The plot of the poem (or the Scene, as Maykov has defined it) was based on Melnikov-Petchorsky's novel Grisha. Maykov omitted many trivial scenes as well as the episode of his ‘temptation by romantic passions' but strengthened the final, adding a scene of arson which was absent in Melnikov's novel.

The Wanderer (poem)

The Wanderer is an Old English poem preserved only in an anthology known as the Exeter Book, a manuscript dating from the late 10th century. It counts 115 lines of alliterative verse. As is often the case in Anglo-Saxon verse, the composer and compiler are anonymous, and within the manuscript the poem is untitled.

Origins

The date of the poem is impossible to determine, but it must have been composed and written before the Exeter Book. Some scholars believe that the poem was composed around the time the Anglo-Saxons were making the conversion to Christianity, sometime around 597, though some would date it as much as several centuries later. The inclusion of a number of Norse-influenced words, such as the compound hrimceald (ice-cold, from the Old Norse word hrimkaldr), and some unusual spelling forms, has encouraged others to date the poem to the late 9th or early 10th century.

The metre of the poem is of four-stress lines, divided between the second and third stresses by a caesura. Each caesura is indicated in the manuscript by a subtle increase in character spacing and with full stops, but modern print editions render them in a more obvious fashion. Like most Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative metre.