Madonna’s “Love Sensation” has us revisiting the 1980 disco classic that inspired generations of dance floor euphoria
By Carson Mlnarik
Madonna unleashed another wave of disco hysteria last week with “Love Sensation,” the latest thumping taste of ecstasy from her upcoming album Confessions II.
The track was masterminded solely by the Queen of Pop and producer Stuart Price, with a dance floor ready chorus and soul-stirring lyrics, in which the “I Feel So Free” singer basks in a bond so powerful, she feels their “love sensation / good vibration.”
It’s a sticky and addictive earworm that feels tailor-made for the club and destined for heavy rotation this Pride season… which had us thinking back on another track that’s inspired us to dance for nearly 50 years.
And it just so happens to also be titled “Love Sensation.”
Listen.
Disco singer Loleatta Holloway released “Love Sensation” in 1980 after meeting songwriter and producer Dan Hartman at a club performance.
Hartman, who’s written countless American music staples like “Free Ride” and “Living in America,” had been working on a little tune called “Relight My Fire” and eyeing Bette Midler or Patti Labelle for a vocal contribution, but was immediately taken by Holloway and the voice she had honed from decades in gospel.
“They made an agreement that he had to write me a song [in exchange] and that was ‘Love Sensation,’” Holloway told DJ History.
That said, recording what would eventually become a dance club chart-topper was no easy task.
“I sang that song 30 times,” Holloway remembered.
“When I went in there, I was as clear as a bell. The first time I did it, it was perfect, I thought. I did it a second time. Then he said, ‘Your voice is too clear — I want it hard and deep!’”
But by the time she got to that stretching high note at the track’s end, her voice was “so hoarse” that she resorted to Vicks VapoRub and coffee to calm her throat down long enough to hold it. Oop!
Immediately, the track resonated in the clubs, and especially among LGBTQ+ audiences. “I was really surprised that the gay crowd was so into me,” Holloway said in 1997. “I didn’t have to build them up. They were already there.”
Over the years, she would go on to perform for the community at Pride events, including two especially iconic New York City performances in 1984 and 1997.
Nevertheless, the reason you probably know “Love Sensation” likely has nothing to do with Holloway, unfortunately.
The track’s early ’80s release primed it to be fresh in the minds of young artists as remix culture blossomed.
Moving into the ’90s, acts like Black Box and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch reimagined the track and Holloway’s vocals — “Love sensation / Oh it’s got me under a spell / It’s such a good vibration / A feeling that I know so well” — although she was rarely mentioned in larger discussions about the tune.
For her part, Holloway admitted that “for years, it destroyed me,” but eventually she came to terms with it.
“It made me a person I don’t like, and I’m not a bad person,” she later told DJ History. “But in life, you get what you got coming … I’ve come a long way!”
Today, “Love Sensation” is remembered as one of the best dance and disco songs of all time by publications like NME and Slant Magazine.
And while Mark Wahlberg may not give Holloway, who passed at 64-years-old in 2011, the flowers she’s owed, the gays do.
Most recently, the vocalist (who’s remembered as “a disco screaming diva”) posthumously appeared on electronic music outfit House of Pride’s track “Queer Nation.”
