In May 2013, almost a year to the day after Donna Summer succumbed to lung cancer, Giorgio Moroder made his live DJ debut at Williamsburg club Output. It was a tender moment for disco fans, and there was something healing in having her voice brought to life once more by the legendary producer. As critic Barry Walters recently put it, Summer and Moroder shared an "uncommon symbiosis…[that] crossed gender, color, national and cultural boundaries as disco's ultimate emissaries of universal love." Who else would the packed crowd at Output rather hear play "Love to Love You Baby" or "I Feel Love" than Giorgio himself?
Earlier that same week, Giorgio could be heard recounting the beatific click of the Moog synthesizer on a newly released LP that would become one of the biggest albums of the year, Daft Punk's Random Access Memories. The man hadn't produced much music of his own since the pomp of the 1990 FIFA World Cup theme, but the Giorgio Renaissance was nigh. Naturally, news of a new album soon followed. Names like Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears were mentioned as his post-Summer muses, and the septuagenarian name-dropped EDM grandchildren like Avicii and Calvin Harris in interviews.
The Eurodisco/Europop/proto-Eurotrance he set in motion in the 1970s was evident from the album's cheesy first single, "74 Is the New 24", which didn't bode well for his return. But going back to late '60s—see the album That's Bubble Gum - That's Giorgio—questionable taste has almost always been part of his story. During his '70s disco heyday, Giorgio had the Midas Touch, and he carried that energy into the new decade and new wave, be it the symphonic synth soundtracks for spermatozoa on Sparks' "Tryouts for the Human Race", the razor guitars of Blondie's "Call Me", or the billowing synthetic curtain balladry of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away". But for all his platinum hits, Moroder was also a Frank Stallone and Sammy Hagar collaborator.
For the most part, Déjà Vu is rickety and wholly unnecessary, and Moroder's return feels like Rick Barry coming out of retirement to suit up for the Golden State Warriors. Some traces of Giorgio's champion-caliber game remain, from the slightly menacing Moog arpeggios that open "74 Is the New 24" to the vocodered growl accompanying Kylie on "Right Here, Right Now", but his skills are otherwise in such precipitous decline it's almost agonizing to witness.
Moroder is one of the most distinctive producers of 20th century pop and dance music, but on Déjà Vu, his sound is devoid of distinguishing features. The dinky synth melody of "4 U With Love" that opens the album evokes the kind of mid-'70s froth Moroder's visionary electronic productions blew off the dancefloor. Even worse, it's coupled with the kind of cookie-cutter beat and filter sweeps that most initiate trance producers have long deleted from their hard drives.
In hindsight, it was telling that Daft Punk deployed Moroder as interview subject rather than as musical contributor. But their influence hangs over this album to a degree. As if hoping to replicate the success of RAM or else pay homage to the robots for resuscitating his career, almost every track here deploys some variation of "Get Lucky"'s silvery guitar riff. It's on the hook of the Sia-sung title track, amid the disco touches of "Wildstar", and on the subpar-Nick Jonas of the Matthew Korma cut "Tempted". Throughout, the songs sound both overly dramatic and oddly ordinary (see Mikky Ekko's "Don't Let Go"); in a blind test, there might be no way to distinguish between these Moroder productions and a 100% Eurotrance compilation.
Which is a disservice to the singers who queued up to work with Moroder. Perhaps some of them are seeking to reclaim some of Summer's magic, but Moroder doesn't offer much assistance. Britney was perhaps best equipped to grapple with the producer's Svedka fembot beat with her previous Auto-Tuned dalliances, but their already limp cover of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" derails thanks to Giorgio's own vocodered interlude. Kelis, whose husky, near-androgynous voice best approximates Summer, almost carries off "Back and Forth", if only the song didn't grind to a halt at the chorus. Kylie, whose early-aughts pop pinnacle owed a great deal to the synergy of Summer-Moroder, feels weighed down by Giorgio's electropop, yet she still makes "Right Here, Right Now" work for her. Through sheer force of will, Charli XCX entwines her posh pout with Giorgio's "Pocket Calculator" vocal hook, transcending the Dance Dance Revolution production of "Diamonds" to claim the song as her own.
From Britney and Kelis to Kylie and Sia, Déjà Vu boasts a pantheon of pop goddesses, but Moroder only gives them bland boutique hotel electronic music to work with. The album oddly posits a parallel world where these singers are out of work, forgotten pop stars lending their voices to generic EDM tracks just to keep the lights on. If not for their presence on Déjà Vu, Moroder's once-unmistakable music would be all but anonymous.
