*On December 15, 2025 Donna Summer was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame at an intimate ceremony in Los Angeles, CA.
Donna Summer rocketed to international superstardom in the mid-1970s when her groundbreaking fusion of R&B, soul, pop, funk, rock, disco, and avant-garde electronica catapulted underground dance music from the clubs of Europe to the top of global sales and radio charts.
Maintaining an unbroken string of hits throughout the ’70s and ’80s—most of which she wrote—Donna holds the record for the most consecutive double albums to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts (three in a row) and was the first female artist to score four No. 1 singles in a 12-month period: three solo and one duet with Barbra Streisand.
A five-time Grammy winner, Summer was the first artist to win Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female (1979, “Hot Stuff”), and the first-ever recipient of Best Dance Recording (1997, “Carry On”). She was the first female artist to receive Grammy Awards in four distinct genres: R&B, Dance, Rock, and Gospel. In 2024, she made history again as the first solo female artist to receive both the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Grammy Hall of Fame in the same year.
In 2004, Summer was honored as one of the inaugural inductees into the Dance Music Hall of Fame—recognized both as an Artist Inductee and for her groundbreaking 1977 single “I Feel Love,” which earned a Record Inductee distinction.
Born Donna Gaines on New Year’s Eve in Boston, she grew up in a large family and developed a passion for music early on. By age eight, she was singing in church choirs and city-wide choruses. In her early twenties, she moved to Germany and began performing in musical theatre, landing roles in acclaimed productions such as Hair, Showboat, Godspell, and Porgy and Bess, as well as performing with the Vienna Folk Opera. Her first single, a cover of The Janett’s “Sally Go Round the Roses,” was released in 1971. While working as a backup singer, she met producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, who produced her single “The Hostage”—a hit in the Netherlands, France, and Belgium.
In 1975, Moroder and Bellotte produced “Love to Love You Baby,” which soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and marked Summer’s triumphant return to the U.S. as a defining voice of the disco era. The song paved the way for a string of global hits including “MacArthur Park,” “Bad Girls,” “Hot Stuff,” “Dim All the Lights,” “On the Radio,” “Enough Is Enough,” and the Grammy, Golden Globe and Oscar-winning anthem “Last Dance” from Thank God It’s Friday—a career-defining moment.
In 1980, Summer became the first artist signed to David Geffen’s new label, Geffen Records, signaling a shift beyond disco into new musical territory. She collaborated with top producers including Quincy Jones, Michael Omartian, and the UK’s Stock Aitken Waterman, releasing hits such as “State of Independence” (featuring Michael Jackson on backing vocals), the enduring feminist anthem “She Works Hard for the Money”—one of the most-played songs of all time—and the infectious “This Time I Know It’s for Real.”
Her 1994 greatest hits collection Endless Summer featured the new track “Melody of Love,” which became Billboard’s No. 1 Dance record of the year. That same year, she released Christmas Spirit, a critically acclaimed holiday album recorded with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Summer continued to tour throughout the ’90s, performing to sold-out audiences worldwide.
In 1999, Sony/Epic released VH1 Presents Donna Summer: Live & More – Encore!, a live album and DVD capturing her acclaimed VH1 concert at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom. One of the network’s highest-rated broadcasts, it featured powerful performances of her biggest hits.
Summer earned six American Music Awards, three consecutive No. 1 platinum double albums (a feat unmatched by any solo artist), 11 gold albums, four No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, three platinum singles, and 12 gold singles.
She was the first female artist to simultaneously hold a No. 1 single and No. 1 album on the Billboard Hot 100 twice: Live & More with “MacArthur Park” in 1978, and Bad Girls with “Hot Stuff” in 1979. A few weeks later in the summer of 1979, she broke her own record when both Bad Girls the album and single topped the charts simultaneously. Over 38 years, she charted 33 Top Ten hits on Billboard’s disco/dance/dance club charts. In 2013, “MacArthur Park” returned to No. 1 on the Billboard dance charts—35 years after its original release—bringing her total to 17 No. 1 dance hits and reaffirming her title as “The Queen of Dance.”
Beyond music, Summer was a celebrated visual artist whose work was exhibited globally, including at the Whitney Museum, Sotheby’s in New York, and Steven Spielberg’s Starbright Foundation Tour of Japan. Since 1989, she sold over $2.2 million in original art, with her highest-selling piece fetching $150,000. In 2003, Random House published her autobiography Ordinary Girl, co-authored with Marc Eliot, and Universal released The Journey, a compilation of her classic hits and two new songs.
In 2008, marking four decades of artistic achievement, Summer released Crayons, her highest-charting debut album ever. It reached No. 17 on the Billboard 200 and No. 5 on the R&B chart, spawning three No. 1 dance hits: “I’m a Fire,” “Stamp Your Feet,” and “Fame (The Game).”
With over 150 million records sold worldwide, Summer was ranked No. 24 on Billboard’s 50th Anniversary list of the “Hot 100 Artists of All Time.” She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.
In 2018, SUMMER: The Donna Summer Musical opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Directed by Tony Award winner Des McAnuff, the show became one of the season’s hottest tickets and earned two Tony nominations—for LaChanze (Best Actress) and Ariana DeBose (Best Featured Actress)—portraying Summer at different stages of her life.