‘I Feel Love’: Music mutation in the electronic age

Abstract

This chapter proposes the concept of mutation as an alternative to notation to cover practices of music inscription in the twentieth century: the century when electronic technology changed the ways in which we feel, make, and compose music. The chapter zooms in on the song that catapulted pop music into dance music in the late 1970s: ‘I Feel Love’ (1977), co-written and performed by Donna Summer and produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. While Moroder has always posited himself as the genius who invented dance, the chapter reveals that ‘I Feel Love’ is rather the result of a distributed form of creativity that is the hallmark of music mutation. The production process of ‘I Feel Love’ thus provides a unique insight into new forms of creativity and inscription emerging in the electronic age.