All-TIME 100 Songs

There are fewer than 20 different words in “I Feel Love,” and that’s counting ooh. But this landmark disco record isn’t about getting language across. It’s a luxurious immersion in layer upon layer of Donna Summer’s feathery soprano and producer Giorgio Moroder’s fluttering, pattering synthesizers, a cathedral built out of identical 2-by-4s. Moroder’s stroke of genius was realizing that the relentless pulse of disco had a lot in common with both experimental electronic music and the dreamy, tranced-out rhythms that had been coming out of German rock. He constructed an all-electronic backing track that barely changed and flickered like a strobe light, bodiless and weightless in contrast to the rapturous eroticism of Summer’s performance. The original single is over in less than six minutes. The disco disc is closer to eight minutes, and its remix is more like 15. The song could go on forever and never seem too long.

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