Summer Renaissance

Summary

Podcast Summary: Cannonball with Wesley Morris – "Summer Renaissance"

Host: The New York Times
Episode Title: Summer Renaissance
Date: November 8, 2022

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Wesley Morris and Jay Wortham dive deeply into the influence and legacy of the iconic Donna Summer, examining her pivotal impact on pop and electronic music—particularly through the lens of Beyonce’s album "Renaissance," which revives Donna Summer’s spirit and sound for modern audiences. Through personal reminiscences, critical analysis, and cultural context, they explore Donna’s innovation, the struggles of Black women in music, and the significance of honoring artistic foremothers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Donna Summer’s Enduring Influence & Beyonce’s Tribute

• Beyonce as Archival Steward: The episode opens with celebration of Beyonce’s "Summer Renaissance," a track that interpolates Donna Summer’s "I Feel Love." The hosts emphasize how Beyonce pays homage to Summer and, by extension, the legacy of disco and electronic music.
  • “She loves to give flowers, and the song and the entire album is an honoring of Donna Summer.… That imagery has become a backbone of contemporary culture. If you think about it, she is an architect of the pop culture we experience today.” - Jay Wortham (01:51)
• “I Feel Love”: Recognized as a foundational electronic record, the song’s sound continues to shape music today.

2. Donna Summer’s Creative Journey

• Early Career: Born in Boston, unable to break into Broadway, Summer’s career launched overseas in Germany, where she became fluent in German and involved in diverse musical projects.
  • "She goes to Germany, becomes a fluent German speaker. She's doing girl group stuff. She's doing gospel rock, and at some point hooks up with this guy, Giorgio Moroder… Donna Summer invented what essentially becomes disco. They perfected, is what I should say." - Wesley Morris (02:38)

3. Body, Somatics, and Disco

• The hosts reflect on how "I Feel Love" and disco, more broadly, were about embodiment and escaping from the mind into the body—a theme aligned with contemporary movements in somatics and self-care.
  • “That song, 'I Feel Love,' invites you in to let the music just rip through you." - Jay Wortham (03:56)
  • “It is a letting your body control your mind.” - Wesley Morris (04:53)
  • “It elevates your mood, it raises your credit score, it smooths out your wrinkles. It just fills you with serotonin.” - Jay Wortham (04:58)

4. Underrated Album: 'Donna Summer' (1982)

• Rediscovery and Comparison with 'Thriller': Wesley recalls his childhood attachment to the 1982 self-titled album “Donna Summer," produced by Quincy Jones. He intriguingly positions it as a conceptual "B-side to Thriller," highlighting overlap in production, personnel (Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder), and sonic ambition.
  • “I have always thought of this self-titled album as the B side to Thriller… because these are two artists who are really thinking about what the future should sound like.” - Wesley Morris (09:02)
• Notable Tracks and Collaborations:
  • "State of Independence": Features a star-studded 25-person choir, including Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick, and others, yet barely missed charting in the Top 40.
  • "If It Hurts Just a Little": Cited as a song showing the impending direction of R&B.
    • “You can hear what the next 10 years of American R and B is kind of going to sound like.” - Wesley Morris (11:07)
  • "Protection": Collaboration with Bruce Springsteen, drawing parallels to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
    • “The concept is the same. Take an established rock star and put them with an established R&B pop star and see what happens.” - Wesley Morris (13:08)

5. Commercial Success & Historical Parallels

• Alternative Histories: Despite talent and production resources, Summer's album had modest commercial success compared to "Thriller." The hosts ponder how history might have remembered Donna Summer differently if this album had hit bigger.
  • "What does it mean that Donna Summer was someone equally talented, equally resourced, and equally in the same position as Michael at that moment in history?" - Jay Wortham (14:17)

6. Disco Backlash, Identity & Reinvention

• Disco Demolition Night (1979): The hosts contextualize the infamous anti-disco event as a racially charged attack on a culture created by Black people, women, and queer people.
  • “This was a white male energy. White male rock energy.… These white guys are basically laying waste to music made by black people.… It was a lynching by other means.” - Wesley Morris (20:01, 21:21)
• Donna’s Attempt at Reinvention: Returning from Europe, Summer struggled with stereotypes—especially as a Black woman associated with sexualized disco music—and sought to be recognized for her broader artistry.
  • “One of the hardships for me is that people don't take me seriously.” - Wesley Morris (18:51)
  • “The world wouldn't let this woman reinvent herself.” - Jay Wortham (19:11)

7. "She Works Hard for the Money" and the Realities of Fame

• Personal Struggles: Summer’s mega-hit is framed as both a tribute to working women and a reflection on her own difficulties with recognition, fame, and depression.
  • “Donna Summer's aware that the world cannot appreciate some of her genuine talents and her real intellectual labor.… it culminates in a deep depression and a suicide attempt.” - Jay Wortham (25:27)

8. Gospel, Jazz, and Black Feminist Consciousness

• The hosts discuss Summer’s engagement with Black radical consciousness in Germany, her collaborations with Black producers, and her inclusion of jazz classics (e.g. “Lush Life” by Billy Strayhorn).
  • “There are nine songs on this album, not a one sounds like the other, except there's an element in all of them to gospel, and that is really striking to me. Except the last song, which is called Lush Life.” - Wesley Morris (22:44)
  • “I heard a story that I know is true that Donna didn't want to sing it, because she was a little concerned about, you know, Billy Strayhorn being openly gay.” - Wesley Morris (24:26)
  • The conversation touches on intersectionality, feminist thought, and global Black identity (noting Audre Lorde’s time in Berlin).

9. The Power and Necessity of Honoring Black Women Artists

• The hosts connect Beyonce’s overt homage to a broader practice of Black women archiving and crediting their own.
  • "It is a type of care. It is a type of archival practice. It is a type of stewardship that black women must do for each other. And this is a very long and rich practice.… there is something incredibly profound and generous in the reminder that the world is not always going to remember us for our contributions, but we can do it for each other.” - Jay Wortham (27:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Donna Summer’s sound:
  “This one song, I Feel Love, is responsible for 50 years of electronic music in all its forms…” - Wesley Morris (02:23)
• On bodily experience:
  “It's like a shot of adrenaline laced with sparkle paste.” - Jay Wortham (04:58)
• On disco’s demise and racism:
  “It was a lynching by other means.” - Wesley Morris (21:21)
• On Black women’s archival practices:
  “And I think this is work that Beyonce's doing right now. Like, let me remind you, let's enjoy this album… but let's talk about where it came from and one of the shapers of this cultural movement.” - Jay Wortham (27:27)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:25 – 02:23: Tribute to Donna Summer and her influence on current pop culture
• 02:38 – 03:34: Donna Summer’s early life and career in Germany
• 04:53 – 05:13: The somatic, bodily impact of "I Feel Love"
• 07:29 – 09:02: Personal recollections of the "Donna Summer" album; Quincy Jones’s production
• 09:27 – 10:06: Comparing "Donna Summer" to Michael Jackson’s "Thriller"
• 10:41 – 13:08: Discussion of the genre-blending on the album; the Bruce Springsteen collaboration
• 19:27 – 21:25: The 1979 disco demolition and its racial, cultural implications
• 22:44 – 24:26: Donna Summer’s engagement with jazz and Billy Strayhorn’s legacy
• 25:27 – 27:50: "She Works Hard for the Money" and the politics of recognition

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Conclusion

"Summer Renaissance" provides a rich, nuanced reflection on Donna Summer’s significance as more than just the "Queen of Disco": she emerges as a bold musical innovator, a Black feminist figure navigating structural and cultural barriers, and a continuous inspiration for icons like Beyonce. Through personal storytelling, historical context, and critical thinking, Wesley Morris and Jay Wortham illuminate the necessity of memory, attribution, and celebration among Black women artists—reminding us that their contributions are foundational to pop culture as we know it.

Transcript

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Wesley Morris]

Just wanted to say that we're about to have conversation about one of our favorite artists, Donna Summer. But there's also a little Michael Jackson in it, and we just wanted to let you know that in case it's something you don't want to deal with today.

[Jay Wortham]

As always, take care of yourself first, and we will see you on the other side. One of the many visceral pleasures delights of the new Beyonce album Renaissance is that it brought us, our dearly departed Donna Summer, back into the public consciousness. Yes.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes. Oh, yes. This is Summer Renaissance. And it is an interpolation of Donna Summer's I Feel Love.

[Jay Wortham]

Yes.

[Wesley Morris]

And it's like an express train to bliss. I mean, this is the thing about Beyonce.

[Jay Wortham]

I mean, she loves to give flowers, and the song and the entire album is an honoring of Donna Summer. It's like flowing, curly hair, glittering sequins, something fur, something opulent.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Jay Wortham]

Those are the visuals that accompany her music. You know, that imagery has become a backbone of contemporary culture. I mean, if you think about it, she is an architect of the pop culture we experience today.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. This one song, I Feel Love, is responsible for 50 years of electronic music in all its forms and all its permutations, all the directions it wound up going, and we are still living in it in 2022.

[Jay Wortham]

Yes.

[Wesley Morris]

And because of this song and a bunch of songs she does after this, in the 1970s, she essentially becomes the queen of disco. And how she gets to this place is. You know, it's. It's kind of an interesting story. She's born in Boston in 1948 and tries to get a part in the Broadway musical Hair. Can't get a part in. In the Broadway production. So the producers are like, well, you know, we have a spot in Germany, if you want to do that. So she goes to Germany, becomes a fluent German speaker. She's doing girl group stuff. She's doing gospel rock, and at some point hooks up with this guy, Giorgio Moroder, who, along with Pete Bilade, Donna Summer, invent what essentially becomes disco. They perfected, is what I should say.

[Jay Wortham]

Okay, okay.

[Wesley Morris]

And they did many Many songs together. But I Feel Love was a song that just was completely electronic. The only organic, real instrument on the whole thing, the only sort of like human generated sound on that song is Donna Summer's voice.

[Jay Wortham]

It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so. Okay, Wesley, you know, I'm all about the body right now. I'm all about thinking about what it means to be in your body, to lose your body, to let go of it a little bit. And, you know, that song, I Feel Love invites you in to let the music just rip through you. And also what's happening around the same time in American history is the arrival of the study of Somatics, which is all about trying to move out of getting out of your head and back into the body. And that this song comes out pretty much in the same time that this understanding of Somatic's work is arriving in the west, to me just feels like not just a coincidence, but that Donna Summer is a soothsayer. And she knew that people needed to be feeling themselves, to heal themselves, to sort of be in relationship to themselves and other people and their bodies and the earth.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah, I mean, like, it. It is a letting your body control your mind.

[Jay Wortham]

It's like a shot of adrenaline laced with sparkle paste. Like it just shoots you to the moon. It elevates your mood, it raises your credit score, it smooths out your wrinkles. It just fills you with serotonin.

[Wesley Morris]

But I would also say that there's more to her than I Feel Love. And I think one of her challenges as an artist was to try to complicate her sound. The ways in which she is always combining, recombining, rethinking, bringing in the church, bringing in rock and roll, synthesizing those things with electronic music. And my favorite Donna Summer album, the one that best shows off this interest in a diversity of sound is one that nobody paid attention to.

[Jay Wortham]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

Came out in 1982. And I feel like to understand what this woman was really all about, we should talk about that.

[Jay Wortham]

I'm in.

[Wesley Morris]

So today on this show, we're going to talk about Donna Summer, the album by Donna Summer. I'm Wesley Morris.

[Jay Wortham]

And I'm Jay Wortham.

[Wesley Morris]

We're two culture writers at the New York Times.

[Jay Wortham]

And this is still processing.

[Wesley Morris]

It's gotta be. The first time I ever heard Donna Summer was in 1982, when I was maybe 6. My mother bought a lot of 45 singles because they were cheaper than whole albums. And I distinctly remember there Being a copy of a song called State of Independence. And on the COVID was this woman. And she was just strikingly beautiful to me. And the song was just as beautiful. It had this great heavy bottom, but it kind of chugged along with the sound that I did not know, I would not have known then to describe as like some kind of African, Latin something. Right. And she sounded so sure of what she was singing.

[Jay Wortham]

Yes. Her voice is so beautiful too.

[Wesley Morris]

It's so beautiful. I played that song over and over and over and over. And my mom at some point was like, stop it.

[Jay Wortham]

Wow.

[Wesley Morris]

And at some point I got my hands on the whole album. And the album is called Donna Summer. Now, the producer of the self titled Donna Summer album was Quincy Jones. And at this point in 1982, Quincy Jones, he is one of the biggest producers in the world. They make this great song called State of Independence. There is like a 25 person choir on this, on this song. Every single person is a person you've heard of. Let's call Lionel. Lionel Richie. Is Stevie around? We'll call Stevie Wonder. You know our friend Dionne Warwick. I saw her at the Gelsons the other day. Wonder what she's up to. Just bring everybody in. And I'm a big chart person. And I was home keeping track of the charts. Guess what? Never cracked the top 40, of course, number 41. But you know what was a hit?

[Jay Wortham]

Wow.

[Wesley Morris]

The same song, basically.

[Jay Wortham]

I was gonna say it's like the inverse of that song.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, both these songs have a kind of driving like Caribbean, African. They're both drawing from diasporic sources basically. Right. To make a kind of R and B. And the thing about the Donna Summer album is that I have always thought of this self titled album as the B side to Thriller.

[Jay Wortham]

Okay. What?

[Wesley Morris]

Well, I mean, first of all, Quincy Jones produced them both.

[Jay Wortham]

The DNA's there.

[Wesley Morris]

But also because these are two artists who are really thinking about what the future should sound like and the way to take all this technology and make it sound like it's moving somewhere into the future. And Michael Jackson is on this album in what way? He's in the State of Independence choir. He's also in there. Yeah, yeah. So I just want to say that I. In my mind, I. What I see is Donna Summer down the hall from Michael Jackson.

[Jay Wortham]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

And Quincy's just like.

[Jay Wortham]

He's running back and forth.

[Wesley Morris]

Donna, I gotta go.

[Jay Wortham]

Right.

[Wesley Morris]

Michael. Michael's calling. He won't stop.

[Jay Wortham]

No surprise there. The contributions of an incredible radical black woman lost to time because some Men were too busy.

[Wesley Morris]

But what if this album had done what Thriller did? Even did like 10% of what thriller did. Now, I'm not about to sit here and tell you that Donna Summer is a better album than Thriller. I'm not saying that.

[Jay Wortham]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

That's not what you hear coming out my mouth. But Donna Summer is all about bringing 100% of her many different interests to this album that she is calling something after herself. And so one of my favorite songs in this album is called if It Hurts Just a Little.

[Jay Wortham]

Come on, baby.

[Wesley Morris]

Come on, sugar.

[Jay Wortham]

Come on, honey. Come on down.

[Wesley Morris]

Come on, baby.

[Jay Wortham]

Hold on a second.

[Wesley Morris]

This is called It Hurts if It Hurts Just a Little.

[Jay Wortham]

Okay?

[Wesley Morris]

And it just has that oomph, that char. The best part of the meat is the chard stuff that was on the grill. It's a little salty, crispy, savory, burnt ass ends right here. The thing about that song that I love so much is that you can hear what the next 10 years of American R and B is kind of going to sound like.

[Jay Wortham]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

It's got that sort of up tempo kind of sideways funk where, like, the percussion is sort of driving the, you know, this. This call and response gospel element in conversation with this driving percussion. And it just is. All you want to do is move yourself to it. I think one of the things about this album that is interesting to think about, it's like Thriller does not sound like anything else. There's nothing that sounds like that album.

[Jay Wortham]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

And this, to me, sounds like you can hear a template being established for other artists to try. It is in conversation with a future R and B.

[Jay Wortham]

If it hurts just a little bigger. Oh, and if you try, you will see.

[Wesley Morris]

So they could have done six more of those?

[Jay Wortham]

Absolutely.

[Wesley Morris]

But no, she's like, Quincy, I have some other feelings. My boy Bruce Springsteen, he was in Gelson's too. This is Protection. And this is Bruce on the guitar.

[Jay Wortham]

How unexpected.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes. This, by the way, to me, is the beat it of Donna Summers.

[Jay Wortham]

Donna Summers.

[Wesley Morris]

What? This is the beat of Protection.

[Jay Wortham]

I want to hear it again.

[Wesley Morris]

Now, I'm not saying that Protection and Beat it sound alike. They don't sound alike, but they're serving a similar function. And I don't know if it was Quincy's idea to have a great singer paired with a great guitarist, a great white rock guitarist. And Bruce Springsteen is not exactly Eddie Van Halen, you know, in terms of, you know, that legendary solo on Beating Legendary. But the concept is the same. Take an established rock star and put them with an established R and B pop star and see what happens. Yeah, it's true that Protection also does sound like it is responding to a moment and beat. It sounds like it just really, truly dropped from the sky from some other planet. Whereas Protection sounds like a Bruce Springsteen song that Donna Summer is singing. She's making a case for all the ways in which this music can be recombined. And that to me is enough.

[Jay Wortham]

Huh?

[Wesley Morris]

But this album didn't do so well commercially. I, I mean it was, it went gold. Not bad.

[Jay Wortham]

It's wild.

[Wesley Morris]

It's just wild.

[Jay Wortham]

And what does it mean that Donna Summer was someone equally talented, equally resourced, equally available, and equally in the same position as Michael at that moment in history. And yet one person makes Thriller, the other person makes a self titled album. The world remembers Thriller.

[Wesley Morris]

Don't nobody remember this album.

[Jay Wortham]

Yes, we're always curious about these alternative histories, what could have Been. And this is a really juicy one.

[Wesley Morris]

I just think about this all the time. Like I think Wannabe Starting Something is the single greatest opening song on any album, maybe ever. And I also think sometimes what would have happened if Quincy had given it to Donna Summer?

[Jay Wortham]

Absolutely.

[Wesley Morris]

What would Donna done with Wannabe Starting Something? Now instead we have Donna Summer, the album by Donna Summer. And she's got a great voice that, you know, the disco era didn't always allow her to use. And so I think we're gonna take a break and when we come back, I want to talk about this one song where I think Donna Summer sounds great. And simultaneously I have never heard her sound like this before.

[Jay Wortham]

Let's do it.

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Wesley Morris]

Jay.

[Jay Wortham]

What?

[Wesley Morris]

I cannot believe we have made it this far into a conversation about Donna Summer by Donna Summer and have not talked about the opening song, Laying on Me.

[Jay Wortham]

What are you waiting for?

[Wesley Morris]

You ain't ready.

[Jay Wortham]

Oh, yes.

[Wesley Morris]

A little like percussion. Like hard percussion. The bass sound, it's got that funk synth. And she's having a great time singing this song like that. The way she sounds where she just. There's been a change inside my life.

[Jay Wortham]

Wow.

[Wesley Morris]

It's just. She sounds. She never sounded like that before.

[Jay Wortham]

Maybe one of the reasons she's never sounded like this before is because she hasn't ever felt like this before.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay.

[Jay Wortham]

She's back in the States after having lived abroad for nearly a decade. It sounded like she found a lot of freedom living abroad the way many black Americans do. And she's coming back home. She's coming back into a country that can only see a black woman who dares to mention or play around with sex and sexuality as being this vixen, to put it politely.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, not only that, but just to want to be taken seriously. Absolutely.

[Jay Wortham]

As a. Right. As a human.

[Wesley Morris]

There's an interview that she gave where she basically is saying, listen, one of the hardships for me is that people don't take me seriously.

[Jay Wortham]

Right.

[Wesley Morris]

And what they couldn't take seriously was that in the minds of a lot of people, Donna Summer was the queen of disco.

[Jay Wortham]

Hmm.

[Wesley Morris]

It can feel like a limitation child.

[Jay Wortham]

Yes. I'm tired just listening to you. The world wouldn't let this woman reinvent herself. Surprise, surprise, Keep going.

[Wesley Morris]

That's basically it. And by the way, yes. This was a music that ate the country.

[Jay Wortham]

That's right.

[Wesley Morris]

This is not some little mini genre. This wasn't something that happened or where nobody. Donald Duck. Has a mock disco song. Everybody did a disco song. The biggest movie of 1977 is Saturday Night Fever, where a white man goes to dance at a disco.

[Jay Wortham]

Are you as good in bed as you on that dance floor?

[Wesley Morris]

Disco is everywhere. In the late 1970s, and people are sick of it.

[Jay Wortham]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

And it all comes to a head in 1979 at a white Sox game where the field is essentially piled high with disco records and then set on fire. This was a white male energy. White male rock energy. This is now officially the world's largest anti disco rally. But there's something about that moment where they have the disco demolition, basically, is what. What it wound up being called, where, you know, these white guys are basically laying waste to music made by black people. Yeah, black women.

[Jay Wortham]

A lot of black women.

[Wesley Morris]

Queer people.

[Jay Wortham]

It's upsetting because what's being burned is ideas and freedom and play.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Jay Wortham]

It's just such an antidote to the heaviness of the economy, the political environment, everything. And for a bunch of people to say, y' all have had your fun and we don't want to see any more of it is really scary.

[Wesley Morris]

The images are upsetting.

[Jay Wortham]

Yeah. The history of white people using fire to keep us from ourselves. You look at those images and they are familiar.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, yeah. I mean, we can just say it. It was a lynching by other means.

[Jay Wortham]

I mean, imagine being Donna Summer and trying to still make music after something like that. But Donna Summer, she's no stranger to this kind of hate. She says, you know what? I receive this, I see it, and this will not put out my flame. And Donna Summer joins a long legacy of people who have a different experience of identity and self while being abroad, where they find a type of support and feel a freedom of categorization in some ways, right?

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Jay Wortham]

The way that Europe shows up in the 60s and 70s for a lot of people is a place of respite. It is a place of reprieve from everything that's happening here in the civil rights and post civil rights era. And it seems like she finds a home in Germany that other scholars and black feminist thinkers, including our own Audre Lorde, have found. Audre Lorde starts spending a ton of time in Berlin while she's recovering from cancer. She finds all these Afro Germans who are there. And so there is this incredible black radical feminist consciousness in parts of Germany. And, you know, it's hard to know, but to what extent was Donna Summer engaging or feeling any of that?

[Wesley Morris]

And I think that there's something about experiencing that in Europe and then coming back to the United States and hooking up with. I mean, the first black producer she works with is Quincy is Quincy Jones. Right. And the sound that they arrive at together. There are nine songs on this album, not a One sounds like the other, except there's an element in all of them to gospel and that is really striking to me. Except. Except. Except the last song, which is called Lush Life. And it's a cover of the classic, you know, jazz standard Lush Life by the one and only Billy Strayhorn.

[Jay Wortham]

I definitely heard this song. Delilah played this song at some point in my childhood when I was driving home somewhere in the backseat of my dad's car. I feel I like, I deeply resonate with this saxophone.

[Wesley Morris]

I don't know if you know anything about Billy Strayhorn.

[Jay Wortham]

I don't.

[Wesley Morris]

He was Duke Ellington's right hand man.

[Jay Wortham]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

Negro gay person, huh? One of us, you know, in the 1930s and 40s. And the idea that this person in Ladonna Adrian Gaines Summer wanted to end the album is Billy Strayhorn's classic American staple, Lush Life. It's just really deep to me. But I heard a story that I know is true that Donna didn't want to sing it.

[Jay Wortham]

Oh.

[Wesley Morris]

Because she was a little concerned about, you know, Billy Strayhorn being openly gay. And Donna Summer, you know, has these struggles about, you know, her Christianity and it's sort of anti gay values. And Quincy Jones is like, hey, Donna, you can do it. This song is great. Everybody has sung this song. I think you can do it and I think you could do a great job singing it. So why don't you give it a try.

[Jay Wortham]

Again?

[Wesley Morris]

But the biggest hit she had during this period in the 1980s was not on this album. And it's the song, the mega hit. She works hard for the money. And there's something about the you better treat her right part. It's always stuck with me.

[Jay Wortham]

Yeah, cuz it's a song. I mean, she famously writes this song after noticing a very fatigued bathroom attendant on a night out. And she's like, she works hard for her money. And also I think writes a song for women like this bathroom attendant and herself and I'm sure mother, aunts, cousins, sibling, just recognizing how hard women work to be recognized to whatever degree. Donna Summer's aware that the world cannot appreciate some of her genuine talents and her real intellectual labor. I mean, she talks about having these hit songs and everyone around the world knowing her name and knowing her music and being so sick she can't eat, she can't sleep. And the compression that she feels because of this fame, because of this compression into a sex icon, and it culminates in a deep depression and a suicide attempt. And when you think about it, she works hard for the money. Is also about Donna Summer. We should also luxuriate a bit in. In the credit that Beyonce gave to Donna Summer. Right? It is a type of care. It is a type of archival practice. It is a type of stewardship that black women must do for each other. And this is a very long and rich practice. It's everywhere from Twitter with Cite Black Women. It's work that Alice Walker did when she wrote a piece about going to find where Zora Neale Hurston was buried and finding an unmarked grave and reminding the world of the work that she did and brought her out of a type of obscurity and obsolescence to remind people of her contribution. And I think this is work that Beyonce's doing right now. Like, let me remind you, let's enjoy this album. Let's enjoy this sound, but let's talk about where it came from and one of the shapers of this cultural movement. But I do think there is something incredibly profound and generous in the reminder that the world is not always going to remember us for our contributions, but we can do it for each other.

[Wesley Morris]

That's our show.

[Jay Wortham]

Still Processing is produced by Elissa Dudley with Christina Josa and Hans Buto. We are edited by Sarah Saracen and Sasha Weiss.

[Wesley Morris]

The show is mixed by Marianne Lozano and recorded by Maddie Masiello.

[Jay Wortham]

Digital production by Mahima Chablani.

[Wesley Morris]

Our photo editor is Esla Attar. Our theme music's by Kindness. It's called World Restart from the album Otherness. And yo, we're gonna be back next week.

[Jay Wortham]

Yes, you were gonna do that.