ABSTRACT
In early July 1977, Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” was released. The first all-electronic pop single, the track—written and produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellote—became a worldwide smash and a landmark track whose influence resounded far beyond the disco scene at which it was initially targeted. Its legacy is massive and enduring, influencing not just club-oriented post-disco subgenres like Hi-NRG and house but also postpunk, new wave and industrial artists. In many ways the first track of the ’80s arriving three years ahead of schedule, the track’s innovations in sequenced, pulse-based rhythm would pervade the coming decade. But “I Feel Love” is also arguably the single most foundational track for the rave culture and electronic dance music of the ’90s and the twenty-first century. This essay examines the peculiar circumstances behind the creation of “I Feel Love,” which ironically was almost an afterthought, the last track on the album I Remember Yesterday, a largely retro-themed collection of pastiches based around the musical styles of mid-twentieth century genres. Moroder and Bellote decided they wanted to end the LP with a song that represented the future. Completely electronic in its construction and rhythm programming, and featuring gaseously ecstatic vocals from Summer that sound simultaneously carnal and cosmic, “I Feel Love” is where the “residual” elements in disco (Philadelphia soul, show tunes, and other aspects relating to pop tradition) are vaporized almost completely and the “emergent” elements break loose: machinic repetition, trance pulses, ice-cold synth textures, and so forth. But in addition to Moroder’s technical innovations, just as striking is Summer’s robo-diva/“cyborg woman” persona, which prefigures much of the pop music of the twenty-first century: performers like Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Nicki Minaj, and Lady Gaga whose audiovisual missives seem to emanate from some posthuman hyper-reality where animation and actuality are blurred.
