Songs of '83: "She Works Hard for the Money"

Thus far in this list, we've seen artists who made it on to American radio in 1983 who had absorbed and learned from the achievements of disco, and artists who had rejected and fled from those achievements, and even artists who had somehow just plain avoided that whole technological and stylistic revolution in popular music, especially in terms of gender and race. But what we haven't seen yet is what actual pop disco stars themselves did when their innovations and beats from the clubs and dance halls went, and were changed by going, thoroughly mainstream. (What about Michael Jackson, you're asking? Well, 1) he's a special case, as Thriller and the videos from it were kind of the originating cause célèbre of what 1983 meant in the first place; and 2) MJ's disco era was with the Jackson 5 anyway, Off the Wall excepted.)

In any case, the point is--you're Donna Summer, literally the Queen of Disco. You had no less than seven singles in the Top 10 of the Billboard charts between 1977 and 1980. Then, in an equally short period of time, half of pop radio in America decides that disco is way too manufactured and gay and Black to be tolerated, while at the same time a whole bunch of English bands start dominating urban markets, doing everything you and your people had been doing in the studio for years, only with even newer synths and drum machines. Plus, you're caught up in sticky lawsuits with your label. What do you do? You keep doing what you've always done, only maybe you get Musical Youth (yes, that Musical Youth) to add to the song's vocal power and, learning from what Quincy Jones did with Jackson on Thriller, you get Ray Parker, Jr. (yes, that Ray Parker, Jr.) to add some killer guitar licks. Come the summer of 1983, and suddenly America radio simply can't resist. "She Works Hard for the Money" becomes the first video by a Black female artist to go into regular rotation on MTV, and the rest is history.