I Remember Yesterday
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| I Remember Yesterday | ||
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| Studio album by Donna Summer | ||
| Released | May 1977 | |
| Genre | Disco, Pop, Soul, R&B | |
| Length | 35:24 | |
| Label | Casablanca | |
| Producer(s) | Giorgio Moroder, Pete Bellotte | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| Donna Summer chronology | ||
| Four Seasons of Love (1976) |
I Remember Yesterday (1977) |
Once Upon a Time (1977) |
I Remember Yesterday is the fifth original album by American singer Donna Summer. Like her previous three albums, it was a concept album which saw Summer combining the recent disco sound with various sounds of the past.
Side One of the LP saw Summer "remembering yesterday" by combining the electronic disco sound with sounds of the 1940s ("I Remember Yesterday"), 1950s ("Love's Unkind") and 1960s ("Back In Love Again"). Side Two consisted of two pop/disco tracks, a ballad and finished with a disco song supposedly representing "the future" that would become one of the most famous songs of that genre - "I Feel Love".
As with Summer's last few albums, different record labels distributed her work in different nations. Some of the labels chose to release the ballad "Can't We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)" as the first single, with "I Feel Love" as the B-side. However, the impact of the song was so huge that it was soon released internationally as an A-side. Previous disco tracks had usually been backed by an acoustic orchestra, and it has been reported that this was the first ever track to use an entirely synthesized backing track, which would later help develop genres of music such as dance and techno. Summer's repetitive vocals over the backing track helped make the song a massive hit. It finally gave her a follow-up in the U.S. to her initial hit ("Love To Love You Baby"), and made Number Six on the Hot 100 singles chart. It was also a huge hit in Europe, and became a Number One hit in the UK. "I Feel Love" firmly put Donna Summer in her place as the leading female artist of disco music.
Summer's sexually-orientated image seemed less prominent on this album, perhaps due to the slight departure from the regular disco sound and the fusion of this sound with the older sounding songs. In fact the lyrics to "Love's Unkind" in particular were very non-sexual compared to many of the love-themed songs Summer had recorded (the songs tells the story of a schoolgirl with a crush on one of her classmates). A couple of the "newer" styled songs on Side Two were slightly more of a sexual nature - namely "Take Me" and "I Feel Love". Around the same time as the album's release, Summer would further her reputation as a serious and credible artist when she was asked to record the theme song for the film The Deep by famous British composer John Barry. The song, "Down Deep Inside" was also released as a single and became another hit for Summer (Top 5 in the UK).
No doubt helped by the phenomenal success of "I Feel Love", the I Remember Yesterday album became her biggest so far. It went Top 10 in the U.S. being certitfied Platinum by the RIAA and made Number 3 in the UK. (to this day her highest chart placing for an album in that country). Not only that it produced several more hit singles in Europe, notably the title track (a UK Top 20 hit) and "Love's Unkind", which became a Number 3 hit in the UK, making it one of her biggest and mostly remembered hits there. "Back In Love Again" was also a European single and became a Top 30 in the UK.
[edit] Track listing
- I Remember Yesterday
- Love's Unkind
- Back In Love Again
- I Remember Yesterday (Reprise)
- Black Lady
- Take Me
- Can't We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)
- I Feel Love
