Donna Summer – I Feel Love

Each month we take a look at a classic track or album and discuss it from a music production perspective, examining any innovations that took place during its recording. This month we take a look at a track that has truly shaped the sound of electronic music ever since; Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love', produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. 

The track featured on Summer's I Remember Yesterday album, and was released in 1977 on Casablanca Records. Bellotte envisioned the album as one that 'chronicled popular music up until the present and on into the future'. 'I Feel Love' was the producers' idea of what the future would sound like – and they weren't wrong with that vision! On its release, Brian Eno said, "This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next 15 years.' If anything, he underestimated the impact that the track would have; it is still influencing dance music production 40 years later.

The sound of the record follows on closely from the electronic experiments of Kraftwerk, its major innovation being to take these sounds to the dancefloor. This was achieved thanks in no small part to engineer Robbie Wedel. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Bellotte explained the process: 'Giorgio had the idea for how the bass should go, and we explained the concept to Robbie that the whole song had to be done with the Moog. He said this meant we would need to lock or sync the Moog to the Studer, and when we asked, 'What do you mean, sync?' Robbie replied, 'Well, whatever you play now will then play in perfect time with the first take.' We said, 'How's that possible?' and he said, 'It's something I've figured out that even Bob Moog didn't know his machine was capable of, and now I've told him how it's done... Here's how: first, we need to record a reference pulse on track 16 of the tape, and from that we can then lock in the Moog so that the rest of the tracks are perfectly synchronised.''

This technical innovation laid the foundation for the sound of dance music right up to the present day, but nobody involved in making the record realized at that time that they even had a hit on their hands, let alone one that would stand the test of time so well. Bellotte recalls; 'We never thought of it as a stand-out track, we just thought it part of a good album'. However, Casablanca Records boss Neil Bogart knew it was a big track the moment he heard it; he called the producers back immediately, stating that 'the single is 'I Feel Love''. The track hit the top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic, and history was made.