Donna Summer - The Journey: The Very Best of Donna Summer [2CD Limited Edition] (2004)

This album is a terrific compilation of Donna Summer's greatest hits. The album has primarily the disco songs that made her a smash success such as "Love To Love You Baby," "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," "Last Dance," and "Dim All The Lights." You also get her classic duet with Barbra Streisand, "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough);" and a group called Brooklyn Dreams helped Donna out on background vocals for "Heaven Knows." There are twenty (yes, twenty) songs on this single CD, so you don't get many 12" extended versions of the songs. To compensate for that loss, however, there is a second bonus CD included inside the jewel case with remixes of some great songs including "Hot Stuff," "I Feel Love," and "You're So Beautiful."

The remastering work was well done; the sound quality is excellent in both my regular CD stereo at home as well as in my portable CD player. This highlights the richness, sexiness and electricity in Donna's voice. Her voice is exciting and always leaves the listener wanting more!

The liner notes are great. There's an extensive essay by Brian Chin, quite a few color photos of Donna, song credits and listings of where each song charted at its' peak of popularity after its' initial release. I also liked the excerpts from Donna's autobiography called Ordinary Girl: The Journey. The extra bonus CD comes inside the regular sized jewel case, however, so you need to carefully pull it out as to not break the plastic case. (They manufactured the CD jewel case this way to save a few bucks on production costs, no doubt.)

Summer fans also hear her great "crossover" songs into something that is more like mainstream pop. You get "She Works Hard For The Money" and "This Time I Know It's for Real." Donna performs a sublime rendition of "I Will Go With You" and there are two "new recordings" by Donna called "That's The Way" and "Dream-a-lot's Theme (I Will Live For Love)."

Overall, the songs Donna sings are the best and this CD is excellent proof of that. The melodies are catchy and the musical arrangements impressed me. Congratulations are due both to Donna for her outstanding accomplishments in the field of music over decades of time and to the other people who helped produce this electric album.

I highly recommend this album as an excellent starter album for people who want to get to be more familiar with Donna Summer's talent. This CD is also great for disco fans, pop fans and even fans of dance music in general.

This album is called "The Journey, The Very Best Of Donna Summer," as if they are somehow implying that Donna's work is done and this is some type of complete and final retrospective. However, I for one will bet that for Donna Summer, the journey to produce great exciting music is far from over.