Dim All the Lights

"Dim All the Lights" is a song by Donna Summer released as a single in the later half of 1979. Taken from her Bad Girls album and produced by longtime collaborator Giorgio Moroder with Pete Bellotte, the track combines Summer's trademark disco beats with a more soulful/R&B-esque sound. Hot on the heels of back-to-back successes "Hot Stuff" and "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights" was another massive hit for the diva, and made Number 2 on the U.S. singles chart. "Dim All the Lights" was Summer's only hit single that she wrote alone, with no co-writers. She originally intended to give the song to Rod Stewart, but changed her mind at the last minute. This song also contains the longest sustained note sung by a female artist in a top 40 song in both the U.S. and the UK, at about sixteen seconds.

[edit] Laura Branigan version

Laura Branigan had a Top 40 Dance hit in 1995 with her own faithful cover of the disco classic. The single version appears on her U.S. greatest hits collection, The Best of Branigan. While Branigan's version was released in several mixes by Atlantic Records, a popular version in some Hi-NRG clubs at the time came from DJ-only label Hot Traxx, which gave clubgoers two divas in one song, editing Donna Summer's original in with Branigan's remake. A video for the single, featuring Branigan surrounded by a bevy of drag queens (Miss Understood, Hedda Lettuce, and Vivacious), would be her last, and the release marked the end of her association with the label, as she pulled back from the music scene to care for her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer.