Songoftheday 7/1/12 - I hung out with the big shots, never knew love was in sights...

Donna Summer - "Love Is In Control (Finger On The Trigger)"
from the album Donna Summer (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (one week)
Weeks in the top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by the late Queen of Disco, Donna Summer. After switching labels in 1980 from Casablanca to Geffen, Summer's first album The Wanderer was a modest success, with the title song making the pop top-3, but the two following singles scraping the bottom of the top-40. After a shelved set with disco producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte (I'm A Rainbow), Geffen paired her up with Quincy Jones, who crafted her self-titled 1982 album.

The first single from Donna Summer, "Love Is In Control", is a frenetic post-disco jam co-written by Jones and Heatwave's Rod Temperton, who would go on that year to helm Michael Jackson's classic Thriller album. And the song has the right balance of dance-funk and pop edge that made the Jones/Temperton song "Rock With You" such a success...

The song brought Summer back into the top-10 for a week, and also made the top-5 on the dance and R&B chart. The whole album is pretty good (there'll be both a Song of the Day and a "Robbed Hit" coming up from the set) so it's kind of crazy that it remains out of print. Maybe with the sales bump her music got after her sad passing will convince Geffen to re-release it..

(Click below to read the rest of the post)...


In 2004, at the height of the "filtered sample" kick, German outfit Tabledancers ripped and shredded the song for "Figga Trigga"...

And in 1984, Summer would have her biggest 80s hit fulfilling her old record contract, workin' hard for her money.

Fun fact: I have the 45 (7" vinyl single) of "Love Is In Control", which has the non-album song "Sometimes Like Butterflies", that Summer co-wrote, as the B-side. It's an awesome song..

Up tomorrow: A British Wilde girl sings about US children.