I Remember Yesterday

I Remember Yesterday is the fifth original album by American singer Donna Summer. Like her previous three albums, it was a concept album, this time seeing Summer combining the recent disco sound with various sounds of the past.

Side One of the LP saw Summer “remembering yesterday” by combining the electronic disco sound with sounds of the 1940s (“I Remember Yesterday”), 1950s (“Love’s Unkind”) and 1960s (“Back in Love Again”). Side Two consisted of two pop/disco tracks, a ballad and finished with a disco song supposedly representing “the future” that would become one of the most famous songs of that genre - “I Feel Love”.

As with Summer’s last few albums, different record labels distributed her work in different nations. Some of the labels chose to release the ballad “Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)” as the first single, with “I Feel Love” as the B-side. However, the impact of the song was so huge that it was soon released internationally as an A-side. Previous disco tracks had usually been backed by an acoustic orchestra, and it has been reported that this was the first ever track to use an entirely synthesized backing track, which would later help develop genres of music such as dance and techno. Summer’s repetitive vocals over the backing track helped make the song a massive hit. It finally gave her a follow-up in the U.S. to her initial hit (“Love to Love You Baby”), and made Number Six on the Hot 100 singles chart. It was also a huge hit in Europe, and became a Number One hit in the UK. “I Feel Love” firmly put Donna Summer in her place as the leading female artist of disco music.