This was the first of more than a dozen hit singles for 10cc – the only band to have three number ones with the same line-up but three different lead singers.
Donna wasn’t one of them but it did reach No.2, which is an impressive start for a new band. Except they weren’t really a new band. They had also reached No.2 two years earlier with Neanderthal Man, released under the band name Hotlegs.
The quartet – Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme – were all multi-instrumentalists, equally adept at songwriting and production.
They had been running Strawberry Studios in Stockport since they were teenagers and released several other singles under different names (The New Wave Band, Festival). In 1972 they recorded Neil Sedaka’s successful comeback album, Solitaire and he suggested they form themselves into a proper band. So they did.
It was pop sevengali Jonathan King’s idea that they release this song, originally intended as a B-side. He signed them to his UK label (home to all sorts of novlety one-hit wonders) and came up with the name 10cc, supposedely symbolising a higher-than-average amount of ejaculate.
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Donna, written by Godley and Creme (supposedly the ‘artistic’ songwriting ying to Gouldman and Stewart’s ‘commercial’ yang) was influenced equally by doo-wop and (less obviously) Frank Zappa, with falsetto vocals by Creme, and an obvious borrow from The Beatles’ song Oh Darling.
So studio-bound were the quartet up to this point that, before they appeared on Top of the Pops, and subsequently going on tour, Lol Creme had to learn how to play his instrument standing up for the first time.