Donna Summer On the Radio Album

1979: “On the Radio” – Donna Summer

52 Songs, 52 Years

Over the next 52 weeks, I’m choosing 52 songs that have meant something to me over the course of my 52 years.

Some songs take me back to a specific place or remind me of who I was at a particular age. Some are tied to a concert, an album, a friendship, a season of life, or simply a moment when a song found me at exactly the right time.

I’m not placing any rules on this series, so I won’t be limiting myself by the year a song was released or by genre. These are simply 52 songs that became part of my story.

52 Songs, 52 Years — Week 1

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Donna Summer’s “On the Radio”

“On the Radio” is a disco song by American singer-songwriter Donna Summer and the title track from her compilation album On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II. Written by Summer’s producer Giorgio Moroder with lyrics by Summer, the song was written for the movie, Foxes, which stars Jodie Foster and Scott Baio (that is quite a duo), though the song didn’t come easily. Summer struggled with writer’s block and said during an NPR interview that the inspiration for the song came from a Stephen Bishop album and she wondered how he would approach the song. She then came up with the lyrics, “must have fallen out of a hole in your old brown overcoat” and the rest is history.

In November 1979, the song was released as a 45 rpm single, and later as a 5-minute version on her Greatest Hits album, a 7-minute 12-inch single, and was included in the soundtrack to the film Foxes. The film contains both a disco version of the song and a ballad instrumental version by Moroder with Summer’s vocals added.

Get the Album on Amazon

Song Details

ArtistDonna Summer
Song“On The Radio”
AlbumOn the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II
ReleasedNovember 23, 1979
Genre(s)Disco, Pop
LabelCasablanca Records
SongwritersDonna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Pete Bellotte
Peak Chart PositionBillboard US Hot 100 – peaked at #5

Why This Song?

Donna Summer’s “On the Radio” will always hold a very special place in my heart as it was the very first single-artist album I ever got as a Christmas present (Santa had given me the Grease Soundtrack a year earlier). It is the title track off the Queen of Disco’s Greatest Hits Volume I & II double album, which also includes the disco classics “Bad Girls”, “Hot Stuff”, “MacArthur Park”, and “Last Dance.” It is included twice on this double-album as the first song on album I and an extended version as the final song on album II.

I still have my original copy in my collection, although I can’t really listen to it much anymore with all of the skips I made over the years. Along with “On the Radio”, I played the hell out of “Bad Girls”, which probably wasn’t the greatest song for a five-year-old to be singing. I just liked the beep-beep in the chorus.

Facts About The Song

A few things you might not know about “On the Radio” and Donna Summer:

  • “On the Radio” was Donna Summer’s 10th Top 10 hit in the US.
  • It was also her 8th and final consecutive Top 5 single in a remarkable late-’70s run.
  • Instrumental parts of the song were used in TV show The Price is Right in the early ’80s.
  • Donna Summer was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1981 for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “On the Radio” but lost to Bette Midler’s “The Rose.”
  • The song was covered by Emmylou Harris as a ballad on her 1983 album White Shoes.
  • Late Tejano superstar Selena covered it live at a sold-out 1995 Houston Astrodome show, and the song was later featured in the 1997 biopic Selena, starring Jennifer Lopez.
  • The B-side song: “There Will Always Be a You.

Listen To “On The Radio”

The Neon Songstress Take

Do I still love this song and album as much today as I did 47 years ago? Hell yes! I love me some Donna Summer. She will always be one of my favorite artists and she was my very first introduction into female singers, which opened a whole new world for me. I also still love to listen to Disco, Funk, ’70s Soul, and ’70s Dance music, and I credit that all to Donna Summer.

While “On the Radio” isn’t the first song I’ve ever loved, and it isn’t necessarily the song that best represents my musical taste today, it totally belongs here because it takes me all the way back to the beginning. I’d been listening to music since I was about two years old, but that Christmas morning in 1979 is where my love of collecting it began. It is where music went from something that played around me to something that was mine.

And that’s where this journey begins. One song down, 51 to go.

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