[Archive 2012-05-18] Disco diva Donna Summer dies at 63

Historical archive — originally published 2012-05-18. This report records what was known on that date. It is not current news; subsequent events may have changed the situation. Wikinews closed in May 2026.

US disco singer Donna Summer died Thursday aged 63 in Key West, Florida, following a struggle with lung cancer. During her career, Summer won five Grammy Awards and had nineteen number one singles in the US charts.

The 1977 Giorgio Moroder-produced single I Feel Love pioneered the use of synthesisers. Brian Eno told David Bowie upon hearing the song, "I've heard the sound of the future".

After disco's popularity wound down, Summer moved across genres, with the 1979 song Hot Stuff earning her a Grammy Award for best rock vocal performance. She said of this: "I am actually the first woman — not black woman — but woman, period, to get a rock-and-roll Grammy".

Donna Summer also appeared in the 1979 movie Thank God It's Friday, and her performance of the song Last Dance earned her an Academy Award for best song.

Summer was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1948 as LaDonna Adrian Gaines. She learned she could sing in her church's gospel choir and then in musicals. In 1973, she married an actor she had met in Austria, Helmuth Sommer, from whom she gets the name "Summer". Before her divorce in 1975, Summer gave birth to Mimi Summer. Five years later, she remarried to Bruce Sudano, a musician, who fathered two daughters, Brooklyn and Amanda.

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