Background
After enjoying immense stardom during the disco era in the 1970s, Summer had experimented with different styles of music during the 1980s and had released several albums with Geffen Records with varied results; Geffen had refused to release much of her material including her biggest post-1970s success: the 1983 She Works Hard for the Money album which had only been released by virtue of being given to another label - Mercury Records - to satisfy a legal dispute between Summer and her 1970s label Casablanca Records. Summer's final Geffen release was her 1987 album All Systems Go.
Summer actually cut her 1989 album: Another Place and Time, for Geffen, the pairing of the singer with the Stock/Aitken/Waterman team being the idea of label owner David Geffen. Since 1987, Stock/Aiken/Watermen had dominated the UK charts with acts like Bananarama, Dead or Alive, Hazell Dean, Kylie Minogue and Rick Astley scoring countless hits worldwide. "S/A/W" were famous for their unique "hit factory" sound, which was basically their own brand of 1980s synthpop/dance. S/A/W described the album as a labour love, and went on to say it was there favorite album. The S/A/W team wrote all ten of the tracks for their collaboration with Summer, with the singer having co-writing and co-producing credit on three. The resultant album contained the typical "hit factory" sound for which S/A/W were famous, as well as a couple of ballads.
Upon hearing the completed album in early 1989, David Geffen and his executive board opted to drop Donna Summer from the label roster without issuing the album. However Warner Bros, Summer's label of release in the UK and Europe since 1982, elected to issue the Another Place and Time album in those territories with the track "This Time I Know It's For Real" becoming a hit in the UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden; "This Time I Know..." also had an especially strong impact in the UK with a spring 1989 peak of #3 affording Summer her best UK chart showing since 1977 when "Love's Unkind" had peaked at #3 (Summer's only higher UK charting single is "I Feel Love" also from 1977). In April 1989 Atlantic Records, Warner Bros affiliate in the WEA conglomerate, acquired the Another Place and Time album for release in the US where boosted by the Top Ten showing of "This Time I Know I Know It's For Real". The parent album reached #53 on the Billboard album chart, eventually selling approximately 225,000 copies in the United States.
A second album was planned with S/A/W, however Summer had a falling out with them and the tracks were later recorded by singer Lonnie Gordon.
Read more about this topic: Another Place And Time
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