Bad Girls: The Donna Summer Hit a Police Stop Inspired
Bad Girls reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for five straight weeks in the summer of 1979.
Donna Summer had written a rough version of it two years earlier and set it aside.
She picked it back up after an assistant of hers was stopped on Sunset Boulevard by a police officer.
The officer assumed the woman was selling herself on the street corner.
Summer turned her anger over that assumption into a chorus built on car horns and a shouted question.
The song she almost never finished became her biggest Hot 100 hit of the decade.
It also handed her a piece of chart history no other woman had touched before.
This is the chart-verified story.
It's built from Billboard's own weekly and year-end data, cross-checked against independently published chart history.
Donna Summer performing at a 1985 inaugural gala in Washington, D.C.
Image credit: White House Photographic Office, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bad Girls Started With a Police Stop on Sunset Boulevard
An Assistant Mistaken for Someone She Wasn't
Donna Summer wrote a rough draft of Bad Girls years before it became a single.
She put it aside without finishing it.
The reason she came back to it traces to an errand run by one of her assistants, Nellie Prestwood.
Prestwood was sent down Sunset Boulevard on label business for Casablanca Records.
An LAPD officer stopped her there and assumed she was soliciting, simply because of where she was walking.
Summer was furious when she found out.
She later told PopMatters what the moment taught her.
"A lot of people don't realize how connected we all are," Summer said.
"Your compassion really kind of feeds your information about a person."
"You look at someone and your heart identifies with their pain."
A Song Built on Compassion, Not Judgment
That compassion is why Bad Girls never mocks the women it describes.
The lyrics take their side, not the side of the men circling the block.
The Donna Summer profile on this site tracks the rest of the run this single kicked off.
The hook's "toot toot" and "beep beep" ad-libs are not decoration.
They mimic the car horns men used to get the attention of women working that stretch of street.
Summer finished the song and brought it to her seventh studio album.
That double LP, released by Casablanca in 1979, was titled Bad Girls.
| Detail | Fact |
|---|---|
| Written | Rough draft years earlier, finished 1979 |
| Recorded | Rusk Sound Studios, Los Angeles |
| Released | June 23, 1979, Casablanca Records |
| B-side | "On My Honor" |
| Album | Title track of Donna Summer's 7th studio album |
Written With the Men Who Became Her In-Laws
Donna Summer did not finish the song alone.
She shares the writing credit with three members of the vocal group Brooklyn Dreams:
- Bruce Sudano, who Summer married on July 16, 1980.
- Joe "Bean" Esposito, Brooklyn Dreams' lead singer.
- Eddie Hokenson, the group's third member.
Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte produced the track, the same team behind nearly every hit Summer released that decade.
They recorded it at Rusk Sound Studios in Los Angeles.
That's the same room where Donna Summer Hot Stuff came together that same year.
A Romance That Started in the Same Sessions
Summer met Sudano in 1978 through his work with Brooklyn Dreams.
Their writing partnership on the song overlapped with the start of their relationship.
Prefer to hear it before reading how it was made? Stream Bad Girls on Listen Now.
Summer and Sudano married a year after the song hit number one.
They stayed married for 32 years, until her death in 2012.
A 1979 twelve-inch single later paired the song with Hot Stuff in one continuous medley.
That joined the two biggest hits from the same album on a single side of vinyl.
Donna Summer with (from left) Francisca Moroder, Bruce Sudano and Giorgio Moroder, 2007.
Image credit: Wolfgang Moroder, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Where the Song Landed on the Charts
The Random 70s Song Generator pulls from the same year-end pool this single climbed.
Bad Girls entered the Billboard Hot 100 in the late spring of 1979.
It reached number one for the week of July 14, 1979.
This site's own weekly Billboard data shows it holding that spot for five straight weeks.
That run lasted through the week of August 17.
Five Weeks Alone at Number One
| Week of | Position |
|---|---|
| July 14 | #1 |
| July 21 | #1 |
| July 28 | #1 |
| August 4 | #1 |
| August 11 | #1 |
This site's own R&B chart data shows an earlier three-week run at number one on the R&B side.
That run started the week of June 23, 1979.
On the year-end tally, Bad Girls closed out 1979 ranked second, behind only The Knack's "My Sharona."
The Week Two Donna Summer Songs Shared the Top Ten
Independently published chart history adds a detail this site's own weekly file doesn't carry on its own.
For the week of June 23, 1979, Hot Stuff sat at number one.
Bad Girls climbed into the top ten right behind it.
That made Summer the first woman with two singles in the Hot 100's top ten in one week.
Bad Girls also topped Billboard's Dance Club Songs chart and Canada's RPM singles chart that year.
In the UK it peaked lower, at number 14 on the Official Singles Chart.
The Grammy It Didn't Win
The Mood Song Matcher groups Bad Girls with the decade's biggest party records.
For one award season, though, it competed as something else entirely.
The 22nd Annual Grammy Awards in 1980 handed out a brand new category: Best Disco Recording.
It was the only year that category ever existed before the backlash against disco pulled it off the books.
Bad Girls was nominated.
It lost to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive.
That song ended up as disco's only Grammy winner in that category's short life.
The Awards It Did Win
The single didn't leave awards season empty-handed.
It earned an American Music Award nomination for Favorite Pop/Rock Single that same year.
Summer herself won the American Music Award for Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist in that same ceremony.
Commercially, the single fared better than any trophy could measure.
The RIAA certified it platinum, crediting it with two million units sold in the United States.
Set against the rest of Music of the 70s, few singles from that era sold this heavily.
Fewer still carried a real social conscience underneath the dance beat.
Frequently Asked Questions
What inspired Donna Summer's Bad Girls?
Bad Girls was inspired by a real incident involving one of Donna Summer's assistants, Nellie Prestwood.
An LAPD officer stopped Prestwood on Sunset Boulevard and assumed she was a sex worker.
Summer was angry when she heard about it.
She channeled that anger into a song that showed compassion for the women on that street, not judgment.
Who wrote Bad Girls?
Donna Summer wrote Bad Girls with three members of the vocal group Brooklyn Dreams.
Those three were Bruce Sudano, Joe Esposito and Eddie Hokenson.
Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte produced the track.
Summer married Sudano in July 1980, about a year after the song became a number one hit.
How many weeks was Bad Girls number one?
Bad Girls spent five consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979.
That run lasted from the week of July 14 through the week of August 17.
It also reached number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
It finished the year ranked second on the 1979 year-end Hot 100.
Did Bad Girls win a Grammy?
Bad Girls was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Disco Recording.
That nomination came at the 22nd Annual Grammy Awards in 1980.
It lost to Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."
That was the only year the Grammys ever handed out a disco-specific award before dropping the category.
What album is Bad Girls on?
Bad Girls is the title track of Donna Summer's seventh studio album.
Casablanca Records released the double LP in 1979.
The single itself came out on June 23, 1979, backed with "On My Honor."
The same album also produced her number one hit "Hot Stuff."
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