This Time I Know It's For Real

Album: Another Place And Time (1989)
Charted: 3 7
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • In this hopeful song, Donna Summer is convinced she's found the love of her life, and she needs him to know right now. She's willing to do just about anything to get the message across: walk a tightrope, shout it through a megaphone, even get it on the news. It's very wholesome, in contrast to some of the sexually charged songs she performed earlier in her career.
  • Summer was the Queen of Disco, but had a number of hits well into the '80s, including "She Works Hard For The Money" in 1983. She hit #21 with a cover of "There Goes My Baby" in 1984, but that was her last US Top 40 until "This Time I Know It's for Real" five years later.

    To find the contemporary dance sound, she enlisted Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman, the UK team responsible for some of the biggest upbeat hits of the era, including "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley and "Venus" by Bananarama. The trio wrote the song with Summer and produced the track along with the rest of her Another Place And Time album, giving her a solid comeback song and her last big hit.
  • The video was done by the Swiss director Dee Trattmann, whose other clients included Cliff Richard and the Thompson Twins. In the clip, Summer and various actors do a variation on the running man dance to simulate motion in a tight studio. It's shot on green screen, but with a swish pan background to compensate for limited compositing capability. By this time, Summer was more of a VH1 artist, where the video got most of its airtime.

Comments: 4

  • Michael Scott from Punta Gorda, FlA decade after MacArthur Park hit shows she really was the queen, stand a side Nicks.
  • Jon from Scotland, United KingdomDonna Summer's career was resurrected by the UK's Stock, Aitken & Waterman in the late 80s when they wrote and produced this song for her. This was followed by SAW remixes of "State Of Independence" and "Hot Stuff" which gained reputable chart positions in the UK. However, following a SAW-produced Greatest Hits album (with her hits re-recorded), Donna Summer failed to score another hit with the PWL record label and was quietly dropped.
  • Philippe from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysiait's her last top 5 song in u.k.
  • Jim from Brunswick, MeThis is one of my favorite Donna Summer songs. Her first top ten hit in 6 years, it chugs along nicely. I'm a sucker for Stock, Aitken & Waterman anyway (the producers of this tune).
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