Donna Summer Taught Me How to Tell a Story and She’s Finally Getting Credit for It #FeelingFriday

Source: Far Out Magazine

This week, Donna Summer was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the first time ever the organization has admitted someone who has passed away.

It’s so important for a few reasons. First of all, it gives credit where credit is long overdue to a masterful artist with talent well beyond what she made headlines for. And secondly, it proves that we can excel at more than one thing.

The song “Try Me I Know We Can Make It” by Donna Summer … I was an instant fan the moment I heard her voice, and I grew up with her music as the soundtrack of my life. Even now, not a day goes by that I don’t hear her music. As I was walking through the Phoenix airport yesterday, I heard “Heaven Knows” on the overhead, and it made me smile inside.

But here's what most people don't know about Donna Summer: she wrote a vast majority of her songs. Of her 32 Hot 100 Billboard Chart songs, she wrote or co-wrote 18 of them. Of her 14 top 10 blockbuster hits, she wrote or co-wrote 9 of them. Across her 17 studio albums, most of those songs were written or co-written by Donna herself.

As Barry Manilow says, “she wrote the songs that makes the whole world dance.”

She could write and sing. Two things … what a shocker (by the way, she also painted and commanded huge prices for her works).

As a kid, I devoured her songs. But I didn't just listen to them, I examined them. I dissected the lyrics and tore them apart, trying to understand the architecture underneath. Not so much the music, even though I loved the music - the beats, the production, the orchestration - but I wanted to know the story there. I wanted to hear the human truth buried inside each song.

That's how I became a storyteller myself. It took me years to realize it, but that’s how I became a writer. One side of me.

Take the song "I Feel Love." On the surface, it's a disco anthem. But what it actually does is capture something universal inside: the feeling of being so completely in love that you're floating. You're weightless. The world disappears. That's not just a dance song, although the team at Billboard named it the #1 dance song of all time. It’s actually a song about transcendence. It’s about what love does to you when it's real and you can feel it.

Now how about "Bad Girls." It sounds like a club banger about prostitutes. But listen to what the lyrics are actually saying: it's the story of someone who has sold themselves out, who has lost control of their own destiny. There's a quiet desperation under all that energy and all those “toot toot’s.” A reckoning.

“You and me, we’re both the same, but you call yourself by a different name.”

Then there’s "She Works Hard for the Money"! Whoa. That's a demand. A woman insisting on respect for who she is and what she does with her life. It's defiant. It's about dignity. It's about being seen.

“She works hard for the money so you better treat her right.”

These aren't just songs with good hooks. These are stories about the human condition. About love, resilience, respect.

OK I have to throw in one more. It’s a deep cut from Donna’s blockbuster “Bad Girls” album. Evidently, she was walking home one day and a stray dog started following her. A cute, friendly stray dog. Donna turned this moment into a story about two lonely people looking for companionship. It’s called “Lucky” because that’s the name she gave to the dog. As you listen to the lyrics, remember that this story was inspired by a dog because it’ll make you :) ….

That's what I learned from Donna Summer: not how to write a pop song but how to write truth. How to find the universal emotion, the real human insight, the inside story and make it land so hard that people can't forget it.

I also learned that I too can be more than one thing. I can run a business and be creative. How about that?!? We tend to want to box people into a format that suits, but that constrains our talents into just one thing. We can be more than just one, and we should be as many as we want.

I’ve translated that energy as a kid into my working life … into my marketing life as I both build brands and create stories as I calculate business issues and creatively solve problems. I’m a strategist at heart, and that requires me (and any of us) to be more than just one thing. And it requires me (and any of us) to fundamentally be a storyteller.

When you understand that … when you learn to create stories the way Donna composed them then everything comes to life. Donna’s work helped me to understand marketing. It helped me to understand why some ideas move people and others don't. It helped me understand that the story is everything.

So thank you Songwriters Hall of Fame for recognizing Donna’s work. While I'm grateful you finally crowned her not just a performer but also a creator, the real recognition happened decades ago for me.

Thank you, Donna. You are a master storyteller. And you taught me how to write. I’m forever grateful.

What's your experience? JIM

P.S. Here is Donna’s “latest” charting song, just released this year from material uncovered from years ago. It’s theme is about never having regrets. How appropriate, especially for me right now. Here is “Run” …