Endless Summer

Her new album Crayons may be filled with a million musical shades. But when it comes to her personality, local color is one hue that always stuck with Donna Summer.

"Oh, I don't ever want to lose it!" laughs Donna Summer of her Bah-ston accent. She may be one of the most successful, influential female recording artists of all time, and she's lived all over the world; but Donna Summer grew up in Dorchester, and within the first few moments of a phone interview she's already dropped enough of those pesky "R" consonants to prove it.

"I always tell people: when you're in New York, it's like watching roaches scatter when the lights go on. People move so fast in New York! But in Boston, it's like watching people mosey," says Donna lovingly of the hometown she said she continues to visit regularly for friends and family.

"Bostonians are able to move in a forward way, but they're able to stop and notice the flowers. They notice other people. I like Bostonians. I feel they have a very different culture. It's part of my culture; I grew up that way... There's a sort of camaraderie."

It's not only the local community with which Summer boasts a proud camaraderie; she also considers herself a longtime friend of the gay community.

"There's such a fantastic bond between us," says Summer. "Some times, things have tried to break that up," she adds with a sigh, referring to those infamous rumors, circulated in the early 1980s, about anti-gay remarks the singer supposedly made. Summer has repeatedly denied ever making the comments, once took legal action against a newspaper that reported them, and has since been a popular performer tapped for AIDS benefits.

"I love the [gay] community," says Summer. "I think my career started at the gay clubs for a reason... There was one [drag queen] doing me at a show once, and I said, 'I wish I looked like that!'

Often imitated but never duplicated, Donna Summer is a true icon in an industry where the word is often tossed around too lightly. But even when her hair is too mussed to hold a crown, Donna Summer is most certainly a dancing queen.

"You're making me laugh right now," says Summer, speaking by phone from her Nashville home, when first asked if she considers herself to inhabit the role of an icon. "Here I am, laying in bed... I look like I've been here for months!"

"I don't look like an icon right now," she continues, her good-natured laugh nearly bursting through the line. "I understand what people perhaps mean by it, in terms of longevity and these songs that have sustained themselves for long periods of time."

"But I don't feel like an icon," she adds humbly. "No, I feel like a woman who needs some sleep!"

Who could blame her? The summer has seen a whirlwind of success for Summer, who recently released Crayons - her highly anticipated first album of original material in 17 years - to critical and commercial acclaim. Crayons bowed at #17 on the Billboard charts, the highest debut yet in the diva's nearly forty-year career, and its two lead singles - the club-serviced "I'm a Fire" and the radio-promoted "Stamp Your Feet" - both became #1 club hits, removing any doubt that Donna's dance floor legacy wouldn't extend into yet another decade.

It is difficult to overstate the impact that Donna Summer has had on popular music in general, and dance music in particular: five Grammy Awards (in categories ranging from Dance to Rock, Inspirational to R&B); named the eighth most successful female recording artist in history by Billboard; twenty Top 40 mainstream hits; and eighteen #1 Club smashes, from her first American single "Love to Love You Baby" in 1975 to her most recent, "Stamp Your Feet" in 2008. She is a seminal recording artist and songwriter, and has arguably been the most pivotal figure in bringing club culture to a mainstream pop audience.

Indeed, while Donna Summer has enjoyed a storied career built on genre-defying doses of pop, R&B, and more, the nightclub has always been her established dominion, and "Queen of Disco" the title that Her Majesty wears with pride.

"I don't find it limiting at all. I find it a great compliment!" says Summer, when asked if she has ever felt pigeonholed by the label. "I always say, it's nice to be the queen of something," she chuckles. "Why not disco?"

And yet when Summer was preparing to record her latest album, one that would be her first of all new material since 1991's Mistaken Identities, the initial direction was to be considerably different than the final product would suggest.

"They wanted me to do an oldies album," explains Summer of Burgundy Records, an imprint of Sony/BMG Entertainment that focuses on established career artists like Summer, Gloria Estefan, and Julio Iglesias. Summer says the label pursued her for a year and a half with the idea of a standards collection of beloved audience favorites, the kind of easy listening tunes that are infrequently dredged from their musical retirement so that one artist or another can spin their own interpretation. Such a project could surely highlight Summer's powerful voice, but would prove creatively frustrating to a songwriter whose pen was bursting with new thoughts.

"I said, 'Look, I'm a songwriter,'" says Summer. "You wouldn't turn to Billy Joel... or Paul McCartney... and tell him to go and do a collection of standards. I'm an artist. If I was Rembrandt or Picasso, you wouldn't tell me to copy someone else's work."

"Part of what I'm supposed to do is encourage other people, as a singer or a songwriter," she says. "I feel part of my mission is to elevate the human psyche, to make people happier, more full, more complete. To assist them in things... Give them anchors of a song that they can hold on to when things get tough."

That motivational attitude is certainly evident on Crayon's lead commercial single, "Stamp Your Feet." The dance-pop jam has the raucous appeal of a rowdy, sing-along empowerment anthem: the kind that would sound perfectly at home in a crowded stadium of sports fans. No surprise, then, that Summer was inspired to craft the song after catching a few football games on television.

"I don't really like to watch football games, because I don't like watching people get hurt," she explains. "But I was watching this one particular football game, and someone got their neck injured during the game. It scared me! But as I was watching, I would see these players get hurt and they'd be taken out [of the game] for a few minutes... then the coach would be sending them back in. Where did they get the courage to go back in and get their butts kicked like that? To play while they're wounded?"

Thus was born the song originally titled "The Player's Anthem," a celebration of self-motivation that encourages listeners to dust themselves off, swallow their nerves and get back in the game. Summer herself has had to rally on more than one occasion, to bounce back from the hits of life, the music industry, and the media attention that it brings.

"When I first became successful, I entered an airport in London and I had no knowledge of how many paparazzi there would be," remembers Summer. "I had never experienced anything like it," she recalls. "They [paparazzi] were hanging outside the trees across from my hotel's bedroom window. It wasn't a nice feeling. It was like being hunted."

"My goal was to figure out how to take my life back," says Summer, who immortalized her media memories on the Crayons track "Fame (The Game)."

Bu it wasn't just the media that threatened to overtake Summer's life in her early days with the music industry. "I don't know whether to start crying when I say this," says Summer, her voice catching. "But right in the beginning of my career, the first year or two I was living in Europe... You know, I had a life. I had friends. And all of a sudden, I was becoming famous; there was a whole group of people taking over my world and [dictating] how I had to make myself look, how I had to feel, and talk, and act, and drive and live..."

The tender Crayons track "Be Myself Again," sees Summer confront these demons from her past. In the end, she says, it was the same support structure she mourned that ultimately restored her sense of Self.

"I've done a lot of soul searching [over the years], trying to remember who I was," says Summer. "I had a lot of friends from before I was famous, who would show me pictures of myself to help me reconnect with something that seemed to be lost forever."

With Crayons, Donna Summer is back on top, and enjoying a resurgence in popularity that is based not just on nostalgia for her past work, but an appreciation for an icon who is still shaping the future of music.

"I've been knocked down so many times," says Summer, turning her attention again to the significance of the single "Stamp Your Feet."

"I might take some knocks and bruises, but until the game is over... I'm playing."