| "I think I've allowed myself to be influenced by everything. That's the only way I can explain it. There's a little bit of wherever my head was at that day; there's a little bit of that in it. I've tried to make it as global as possible... I've been so influenced by so many cultural things round the world. I felt like it was important to bring some of those elements sometimes just into the music."
- Donna Summer, The Hartford Courant, July 19, 2007
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"There are sounds... like some Indian sounds. Different sounds. Just to give a more global feel. When you make music, obviously you have to find your market while you are working at the same time. It's no good to make an album that the record company goes, 'Ah, we don't know what to do with this.' So you have to have an idea when you go in, or try and give an idea at least. My idea, when I went in, was global."
- Donna Summer, The Hartford Courant, July 19, 2007
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"Looking around, I’ve been blessed literally to have a world audience. I’ve traveled all over the world singing in so many different countries and I really wanted to incorporate some sounds and elements, in the words and instrumentation of other places. I wanted the world to recognize that it had also influenced me."
- Donna Summer, Donna's MySpace page, March 28, 2008
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"I wanted this album to have a lot of different directions on it. I did not want it to be any one baby. I just wanted it to be a sampler of flavors and influences from all over the world. There’s a touch of this, a little smidgeon of that, a dash of something else … like when you’re cooking."
- Donna Summer, Donna's MySpace page, March 28, 2008
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"I'm writing with a lot of younger writers and coming up with some songs that people will love and add to the background music of their lives. I'm having a blast being back in the creative process...."
- Donna Summer, TheDay.com, July 20, 2007
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"I listen to a lot of foreign and global music. I try to find someone new that I've never heard when I'm traveling; I have a lot of Bocelli; I'm listening to Arabic and African musicians and Israeli violin music. I like to listen to a lot of sounds and rhythms that fall outside of what we are conditioned to hear in America. There's a lot of good American music, but it's also very narrow and there's a lot going on around the world that American close their ears to. So my new album has some global influences. It's danceable, but there are a lot of different influences from other cultures; it's fun to think that maybe people in other countries can hear their influences on me."
- Donna Summer, TheDay.com, July 20, 2007
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"I am co-writing the songs with a lot of young people. It's not necessarily about their age. It's more about their perceptions.
"Love changes. Singing about love also changes. It's where and who you are. I used to hear MTV being played by my children and I'd say 'Shut that noise off.' Then I started to pay attention to the music - and it changed my perception."
- Donna Summer, NY Daily News, July 22, 2007
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"It's a box of crayons. Each crayon has a different stroke of colour and each layer brings with it its own identity," she said. "Every song is designed to be a single."
- Donna Summer, Reuters, May 16, 2008
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"HOT STUFF: "I'm a Fire" (Burgundy) by Donna Summer brings the disco diva back to the Hot Dance Club Play chart after an absence of over two years. Debuting at No. 28, "Fire" marks Summer's first appearance on this list since "I Got Your Love" went to No. 4 in December 2005.
"Fire" is Summer's highest new entry on Club Play since "This Time I Know It's for Real" also started at No. 28 the week of June 17, 1989.
Billboard's disco chart was on hiatus when Summer made her breakthrough in America with "Love to Love You Baby" in 1975. Once the chart resumed in 1976, Summer made her debut the week of Oct. 9, 1976, with all cuts from her album "Four Seasons of Love." That gives Summer a Club Play chart span of 31 years, six months and one week."
- Billboard (Chartbeat), March 6, 2008
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"[Stamp Your Feet is] the whole concept of being a player in life, coupled with the idea of being a player on an actual field, the whole thing, dealing with the pain and doing things even though you are afraid. Even though you’re afraid of something and your knees are knocking, you get up and do it because a lot depends on it. Players get taken off to the sidelines and bandaged and thrown back in the game because it depends on them to win the game. We’re all ’players.’ It goes back to Shakespeare: ’All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.'"
- Donna Summer, Donna's MySpace page, March 28, 2008
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"[The song Crayons] encompasses a lot of what the album is about. Every song is a different color. Since I’m also a visual artist, that title ties a lot of the loose ends of my life together. The song wrote itself pretty quickly. Taking it to the next level, we influence each other in life. You may have an Arab friend or an Israeli friend or an Indian friend and so you go and eat a little Indian food (or have a little pita bread), or something you’ve never experienced and as we immerse ourselves in each other’s cultural experiences, it’s like taking a crayon and coloring over the lines and the lines become blurred between what’s that and what’s the other. You take two colors and create other colors and you add a third color and there’s another color too. That’s how we are in life and that, to me, is a good indication for this album: feeling free to draw between the lines. Everybody gets crayons at some point in their lives, everybody can relate to the basics. It comes down to that child in us, I think there’s a commonality in the concept of ’Crayons.’"
- Donna Summer, Donna's MySpace page, March 28, 2008
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"[In The Queen Is Back] I’m making fun of myself. There’s irony, it’s poking fun at the idea of being called a queen. That’s a title that has followed me, followed me, and followed me. We were sitting and writing and that title kept popping up in my mind and I’m thinking, ’Am I supposed to write this? Is this too arrogant to write?’ But people call me ’the queen,’ so I guess it’s ok to refer to myself as what everybody else refers to me as. We started writing the song and thought it was kind of cute and funny."
- Donna Summer, Donna's MySpace page, March 28, 2008
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On The Queen Is Back:
"It's just kind of poking fun at the fact that this queen image has prevailed for so long. It's having fun with it and saying I was out of the picture for a while but she's back."
- Donna Summer, Reuters, May 16, 2008
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"Mr. Music, he’s like any DJ, the guy on the radio station, the guy in the DJ booth, the guy that’s changing your moods, the guy that keeps you going, the guy that’s on the radio in the morning when you’re driving. He’s everything you need him to be. Music fast forwards you from one place to another because it takes you away from where you are in a strange way and elevates your mood. When I play ’Mr. Music,’ it’s euphoric, it’s very happy."
- Donna Summer, Donna's MySpace page, March 28, 2008
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"What I wanted to do is strip down a song. I wanted it to be a cappella. There’s always so much hoopla around the voice, I wanted to do a song where there’s no hoopla. There’s just you and the audience listening to somebody who’s just singing to themselves, singing about the intimate parts of what it has taken to do what they do. The thing to do is stay connected to the true self and that’s really difficult in show business. That’s what the song [Be Myself Again]
is about."
- Donna Summer, Donna's MySpace page, March 28, 2008
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On Be Myself Again:
"I was thinking to myself, 'I would love to do a song like 'You're Beautiful,' where I don't sing very many lyrics, where there is just the simplicity of a broken heart, no frills."
- Donna Summer, Billboard
May 3, 2008
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“Hattie Mae is a bartender in the south. She grew up in a very rough environment. Her parents died when she was young. She really had to fend for herself at a very early age. The streets were pretty much her home. She had some relatives that gave her handouts but she really was pretty much on her own. She wanted to sing but her life was so hard. Finally, she evolves to a place where she owns, by default, this little po’ boy restaurant. It’s like a little diner that the local people love. It’s actually becoming quite famous and on certain days of the week she gets a little piano player in there and she sangs. This is her moment to shine.”
- Donna Summer, PopMatters.com
May 20, 2008
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On Fame (The Game)
The song went fast. She had started the hook to a different track and I loved the idea, so I wrote the verses in 2 hours and recorded her on it. 2 weeks later the label called me from the mastering room and said, we can't use the track, can you write new music to it. So I had half a day to produce a new track to it and sent it straight to the mastering studio.
- Toby Gad, DonnaSummertime
May 2008
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On Sand On My Feet:
I spent four days at her amazing beach house and one day we were just looking out the window at the ocean, I jammed on the guitar and she sang whatever she saw and felt about the beach and about the love to her wonderful husband. Then she got hungry and went to the kitchen to cook. I followed her with the guitar in the kitchen and said, "Donna, I know you're hungry but we need to finish this song idea...", so we continued writing the song while she was cooking for us.
- Toby Gad, DonnaSummertime
May 2008
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“‘Sand on my Feet’ is one of the few times I’ve written from my own point of view. I’m almost always writing from a man’s point of view or another person’s point of view.”
- Donna Summer, PopMatters.com
May 20, 2008
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