"The Wanderer" is a song by American singer Donna Summer

Donna Summer

LaDonna Adrian Gaines , known by her stage name, Donna Summer, is an American singer/songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s. She has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Summer is a five-time Grammy winner and was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach...

. Summer made her name as the queen of the disco

Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...

 genre during the 1970s while signed to Casablanca Records

Casablanca Records

Casablanca Records was an American record label started by Neil Bogart, who partnered with Cecil Holmes, Larry Harris, and Buck Reingold in 1973, and based in Los Angeles. The label was formed after all of them had left Buddah Records and secured financing by Warner Bros. Records to start the venture...

. She left the label in 1980 following a dispute and became the first ever artist to be signed to the new Geffen

Geffen Records

Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operated as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-Beginnings:...

 label. Summer continued to work with Giorgio Moroder

Giorgio Moroder

Hansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder is an Italian record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records...

 and Pete Bellotte

Pete Bellotte

Peter J. Bellotte is a British songwriter and record producer, most famous for hismain body of work with Donna Summer alongside his partner Giorgio Moroder...

 who had produced the vast majority of her disco hits. However, disco by now had experienced a backlash - rock DJs were out of work and people were starting to hate disco. Rock music was by now becoming popular and the Summer/Moroder/Bellotte team had incorporated this into Summer's 1979 international bestselling album Bad Girls

Bad Girls (album)

Bad Girls is the seventh studio album by American pop singer Donna Summer, released April 25, 1979 on Casablanca Records. Originally issued as a double album, it incorporates such musical styles as disco, soul, and rock...

which had seen rock and several other styles of music merged into the disco beat. Summer's first Geffen album, The Wanderer however was a full-fledged new wave

New Wave music

New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

/rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

-flavoured affair.

Vocally, it was a return to her understated 1975 debut sound - soft, whispery phrases were the norm in this song, taking on an almost Elvis Presley effect, instead of the power belt she had used often since her album Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time (Donna Summer album)

- Charts :AlbumSingle-Certifications:- Cover versions, appearances in other media etc. :"Sweet Romance" has been sampled by Ilacoin for his underground hit "By a Stranger", which had guest appearances from Labba and Black Rob and featured on Grand Theft Auto III...

and single "Last Dance

Last Dance (song)

"Last Dance" is a hit 1978 song by singer Donna Summer. The song appeared on the Thank God It's Friday movie soundtrack. It was written by Paul Jabara and was co-produced by Summer's regular collaborator Giorgio Moroder, along with Bob Esty...

".

This first single from the album became a big hit for Summer in the United States - peaking at Number 3 on the Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

 singles chart and selling over a million copies. A 12" promotional single was issued, however, unlike all her Top 40 hits prior to this one, it was not an extended version.

Chart positions

Chart (1980)	Peak position
Dutch GfK GfK The GfK Group, established in 1934 as Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung is Germany's largest market research institute, and the fourth largest market research organisation in the world, after Nielsen Company, Kantar Group, and IMS Health... chart	30
Dutch Top 40 Dutch Top 40 The Dutch Top 40 is a weekly music chart, which started as the "Veronica Top 40", because the offshore radio station Radio Veronica was the first to introduce it. It remained "The Veronica Top 40" until 1974, when the station was forced to stop broadcasting...	26
UK Singles Chart UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...	48
US Billboard Hot 100	3