Songfacts®:

• "Dim All The Lights" is one of Donna Summer's many club-ready hits that could pack a dance floor, but the setting of the song is rather intimate, taking place at home with the old record player (the Victrola) playing the mood music for a night of romance. In the song, she no longer has to hit the clubs looking for Mr. Right because she's found him, and they can dance the night away in the comfort of their own home.
  
  Summer had found her true love at this point: Bruce Sudano of the band Brooklyn Dreams. They were married in 1980 and together until Summer's death in 2012.
  
  According to Sudano, Summer wrote the song as a ballad, but upped the tempo in the studio when she recorded it. "If you play it as a ballad, I think the lyric sounds much more romantic," Sudano told Songfacts.
• Donna Summer originally wrote this song for Rod Stewart, before changing her mind at the last minute and recording it for her Bad Girls album. Released as a single, it peaked at #2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, her sixth consecutive top five hit in a row.
• Most of Donna Summer's hits she wrote with her producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. "Dim All The Lights" she wrote on her own - it's her only hit single where she has the solo writing credit.
  
  She wanted to work on the song with her boyfriend Bruce Sudano, but he declined, so she did it herself.
• Manning the production desk were Summer's longtime collaborators Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. The European producers' made-in-Munich dance beat for Summer during the disco era brought her a string of hits and was also highly influential in the development of electronica and techno music.
• The best we can tell, at 16 seconds, this song contains the longest-held note by any female vocalist to make both the US and UK Top 40. The overall longest-held one is the 18-second sustained note sung by Bill Withers on "Lovely Day."