Donna Summer in concert. August 8 and 9 at River Rock Theatre (8811 River Rd., Richmond), 8 pm. Tickets $79.50-$99.50 from Ticketmaster.

Credit: Michael Brandt

Disco legend Donna Summer says music first, glamour second

Throughout a career spanning three decades, five-time Grammy Award winner Donna Summer has sold upwards of 130 million records, and is the only artist in recording history to release three consecutive number-one albums. Two days after the infamous disco-album burning at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1979, Summer, the undisputed Queen of Disco, enjoyed her third chart-topping single and then, like a phoenix from the ashes, reinvented herself as a rock and pop singer, returning to dance music in the 1990s.

Last May, in yet another career twist, Summer released her first studio album of new material in 17 years, Crayons. Likened by the artist to a many-hued box of Crayolas, Summer intentionally created a pastiche of bossa nova, delta blues, funk, dance and, of course, disco. WE caught up with her by phone to speak about the new album, the new age of celebrity, and playing the diva at any age.

At a time when record companies are making all-covers albums with their older black female artists, you released an album of all-new material. How did you pull that off?

I just said “No!” I’m a songwriter. Would they ask the Boss or Billy Joel to do a covers album? You wouldn’t tell Picasso to stop painting and do copies of his old work. Once they got hold of some of those analogies, they got the point. I did promise them one cover of an old song, just to get it off the ground, but when I began playing my new material, they loved it. That’s rare, because most record company executives love to come in and pick your work apart.

On the track “Fame,” you sing about the negative effects of stardom. You’ve spoken in the past about how your life was spinning out of control and how you found balance [in religion]. Is “Fame” something of a cautionary tale to the young starlets out there?

Many people are out there trying to be famous for fame’s sake. Fame should be the result and payoff for something that you learn to do very well. Those people will end up as fodder for the machine if they’re not careful. I was recording in the studio next to Britney Spears, and I couldn’t believe the pressure she was under. She’s made herself available to that, but it brought me back to the times when people were stalking me, [hiding] in trees, following me in cars, tapping my phones... I know what that feeling is. But it’s even worse now.

You’re part of a very exclusive club of women of a certain age who can still get a song onto the charts. How do you keep that diva aura going?

I think that women in rock and roll, we’re a different breed. It’s a glamour thing, but I’m not trying to present myself that way so much anymore, even though I try to be glamourous — don’t get me wrong. I try to look good for my age and be reasonable. I’m not trying to compete with Beyoncé; I’m older and I recognize who I am. I think I’m looking pretty good for my age, but it’s about my music — this is my legacy. This is what I’m going to leave behind when I have to take my teeth out [laughs] and put them in a glass. Two-hundred years from now, I’m going down fighting.