‘Donna’ is an odd song. I can totally see why it was a hit – but also why 10cc really didn’t think it was a single (and why they went to Jonathan King as ‘the only person we knew daft enough to put it out’, at least according to Eric years later). Though many 10cc fans list this breakthrough song as a favorite I’ve never felt her charms were that irresistible as Creme gets to sing an even more ridiculously OTT falsetto on a lyric that makes little sense. What I think is happening – and as ever I could be wrong here – is that Lol’s pretty vocal claims all the things that Donna does to him, causing a sort of nervous breakdown that sees him stand up, sit down and stand on his head. Poor Donna, though, knows nothing of this and sits waiting patiently by the phone for a call telling her how loved she is that is heavily delayed (the fact that she gets the call twice suggests the first is in her imagination, Lol’s campest vocal telling her what she wants to hear). By 10cc standards though this is a flimsy song, cute rather than creative. What’s more the song’s most charming aspect – its melody – is ripped wholesale off The Beatles’ ‘Oh! Darling’.. The problem might well be with me rather than the band though or even the fact that I wasn’t around when the song came out – in its day, when comedy records consisted of impressions of boring celebrities or were unfunny spoofs of rock stars by the ‘elders’ of the day getting their own back at the youngsters, ‘Donna’ must have seemed like a breath of fresh air spoofing not the parental generation but the elder brothers and sisters of the people buying 10cc records. Strangely the 1950s was still revered back in 1972 as the decade that begat the 1960s and created rock and roll so parodying any of it was anarchic. The fact that we’ve had ‘Grease’ and musicians making whole blooming careers out of spoofing it since (Shakin’ Stevens based his entire career on this song) has rather softened its blow. Strangely, given that 1972-1973 was also a big year for plagiarism court cases, nobody ever took issue with this strong-selling single – perhaps they were lulled by its gentle beat, fun harmonies and the contrast between Creme’s high falsetto and Godley’s gentlemanly calls on the telephone. There’s honestly not much more to add, with Donna a bored and lonely housewife waiting for the phone to ring – and receiving one of the oddest calls in the history of rock and roll (its Creme, again, doing his best Clark Gable impression as he professes his love, albeit Clark Gable doing his impression of Mickey Mouse). As most fans probably already know, this song was dashed off by Godley and Creme in about five minutes after Stewart and Gouldman’s [27] ‘Waterfall’ had been chosen for the A-side (the band had struck up a surprisingly fair sounding deal whereby whichever two writers got the A side the other two would always get the B-side thereby splitting the money, although this idea rather peters out after the first three singles). Unable to get a record contract, however, 10cc played Jonathon King the B-side which he loved more than the A-side, causing him to flip the single and release ‘Donna’ instead (not for the first time, Mr. King got things badly wrong as ‘Waterfall’ might well be the best single song 10cc ever did in the 1970s, although I do have to grudgingly give him respect for recognizing 10cc’s talent when every other record label boss in the UK seemed to have cloth ears). In terms of the 10cc story the shadow this song casts is huge – however as a song it feels unfinished, a series of random scattered jokes, doo-wop calls and an unlikely romance that never really gets going and is never explained, with no sense of who Donna or the narrator are. This song is crucially important and as a result is rarely criticized, but it also has a lot to answer for, encouraging 10cc to step behind a cast of caricatures rather than staying true to themselves.
