The Greatest Songs Ever! Love to Love You Baby

In a studio in Munich, Donna Summer lay on the floor in the dark, preparing to moan her way into history.

It was early 1975, and Summer was still 17 minutes of ecstasy away from becoming the sex queen of disco. The Boston-born gospel-trained singer had been living in Europe for about eight years, doing musical theater and background vocals, and she’d recently begun working with an ambitious Italian producer named Giorgio Moroder; Moroder had a few hits under his belt, but he was looking for something bigger.

What they ended up with was “Love to Love You Baby,” a trailblazing early-disco hit that virtually invented the extended remix and forever linked the sound of pulsating dance beats and female sexual pleasure. But at first, Summer was just an understudy: “It was supposed to be a demo for someone else,” she tells Blender.

Inspired by “Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus” — the heavy-breathing 1969 Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin duet — Moroder asked Summer to think of a racy song idea, and she came up with a sweet line: “I love to love you.” Moroder banged out a simple mid-tempo funk groove and brought Summer in the next day. She sang the song’s few lyrics in a girlish semi-whisper meant to evoke Marilyn Monroe. Then she filled out the track with murmurs of fleshly joy.

The understudy had earned herself a starring role. Summer and Moroder returned to the studio with British producer Pete Bellotte to cut a three-and-a-half-minute single for Casablanca Records.

Then Casablanca president Neil Bogart did what record execs do best — complained that it didn’t quite work. His reasoning? It wasn’t long enough.

In an inspired bit of field research, Summer recalls, “Neil played the record when he was making love. He said, ‘You know what? I wish I could have a good 20 minutes of this song.’”

Moroder reassembled the musicians from the session and ingeniously stitched in a series of variations and new parts that ballooned the track to a whopping 17 minutes. When Summer had trouble getting back into character, Moroder cleared everyone from the studio, turned down the lights and had her lie down. She nailed it “in one take,” Moroder says.

“Love to Love You Baby” became an erotic epic. As wah-wah guitars, a strutting bass and warbling keyboards — ’70s-porn staples — weave in and out, Summer vividly simulates orgasms. The music itself climaxes repeatedly, setting the stage for every woman who’s given herself to a groove since, from Madonna to Björk to Beyoncé — who paid the song tribute in 2003’s “Naughty Girl.”

“It has to have a certain dynamic,” Moroder explains, “like Spielberg has one effect every seven minutes in his movies.”

The song was banned by the BBC — whose censors counted 23 “orgasms” — and denounced by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But, of course, the controversy only helped, and the song hit No. 2 pop in the U.S.

Summer, a born-again Christian since 1979, says she’s been surprised by the reaction the song provokes, despite its steamy vibe: She recalls many concerts where undergarments have sailed onstage during the song. “I thought that was a little much,” she says. “You have to have self-control.”