The Donnas are an American all-female hard rock/punk rock band from Palo Alto, California. They draw inspiration from The Ramones, AC/DC, and Kiss. Rolling Stone has stated that "the Donnas offer a guileless take on adolescent alienation; they traffic in kicks, not catharsis, fun rather than rage". MTV has stated that the band offers "nothing more than a good old-fashioned rock & roll party". After gathering a cult following since their May 1993 debut, the band achieved major commercial success in the late-90s and afterward.
Origin and early years
All band members were born in 1979. Brett Anderson (born May 30 1979) is the singer of the band, Allison Robertson (born August 26 1979) is the guitarist, Maya Ford (born January 8 1979) is the bass player, and Torry Castellano (born January 8 1979) plays the drums. As best friends, they formed in the eighth grade to play for their school's "Day on the Green." The only girl band in their town Palo Alto, California, they were relatively unknown until they were out of high school. They are all self-taught musicians and practiced in Castellano's garage nearly every day during high school.Towards the end of their high school days, while they were still known as "The Electrocutes," they decided to create another band (with the same members) that would play softer tunes without distorting the metal queen image of The Electrocutes. To help their fans distinguish between the two bands, they all took matching "Donna" monikers, where all of their names were Donna and their last names were the first initial of their last name (Brett Anderson became Donna A), which they used only when performing as "The Donnas." Although they initially planned on dropping The Donnas after a while and sticking with The Electrocutes, they changed their minds after high school and stuck with the Donnas instead, while still keeping their Donna names. They are sometimes described as a punk band, but the band itself denies any kind of affiliation with the punk rock movement.
Experimenting with different musical styles, they underwent a variety of band names (Screen, Ragady Anne, and The Electrocutes) before settling on The Donnas. They worked with producer Darin Raffaelli for their first two albums, the first of which, simply called The Donnas, was entirely written by Raffaelli and released on his own Superteem! record label. (It was later released again on Lookout! Records.) They took a week off of their senior year of high school to tour Japan, calling themselves The Electrocutes. Afterwards, they signed with Lookout! Records. As the band grew, they were urged to sign with a major label company. In 2001, they signed with Atlantic Records.
Mainstream popularity
In 2002, The Donnas released Spend the Night as their Atlantic debut. The album represented their first attempt at mainstream success. With their single "Take it Off" they were booked for appearances on Total Request Live, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and The Late Show with David Letterman. In the summer of 2003, they played the main stage at Lollapalooza. In 2004, they released their sixth album Gold Medal. In February 2005, they toured Australia with the Big Day Out music festival, playing from Sydney to Perth.Atlantic repeatedly placed the Donnas' music in video game soundtracks. "You've Got A Crush On Me" can be heard in the PlayStation 2 game, Splashdown. "Who Invited You" can be found on soundtrack for True Crime: Streets of LA and MVP Baseball 2003. "I Don't Want to Know" is in the Gran Turismo 4 soundtrack also and a cover of the song was also used for Donkey Konga 2 for the Nintendo GameCube. A cover of "Take it Off" is featured in Guitar Hero and added as a downloadable track in Guitar Hero 2 (released in 2005) and Downhill Domination (released in 2004).
Atlantic also energetically marketed the Donnas through placements in numerous film soundtracks. The band appeared in the movie Drive Me Crazy in 1999 (as The Electrocutes), and later on the TV show Charmed performing the single "Fall Behind Me" at P3. They also appeared in the teen comedy Jawbreaker as the prom band, contributing two songs to the soundtrack ("Rock 'N' Roll Machine" and "Checkin' It Out"). A cover of "Roll On Down The Highway" was used in a Disney commercial. The Donnas can also be heard on Mean Girls during the end credits playing a cover of the Billy Idol song "Dancing With Myself", and they also contributed to the soundtrack of the movie Grind. The video "Too Bad About Your Girl" also features the cast of that film. The song "Take It Off" features in the movie Dodgeball.
"Donna" pseudonym
Up until the release of 2004's Gold Medal, the band used pseudonyms. Each member was known as "Donna" followed by the first initial of their surname. They decided to drop the stage names prior to the release of Gold Medal to present an image appropriate for the more mature sound that they had adopted on the new album.Current
On May 19, 2006 The Donnas posted an announcement on their public message board (which required free registration for viewing) that they had "parted ways with Atlantic Records," claiming "[t]he decision was entirely mutual and completely amicable and will not impact the band, nor will it impact upon the writing, recording or touring for the next Donnas album." Within a year of being dropped by their label, in March 2007 the Donnas released a first song (titled "Don't Wait Up For Me") from their forthcoming new independently-recorded and financed album, along with a new logo.The Donnas released their 7th studio album titled Bitchin on September 18, 2007 on their own Purple Feather Records label. The band released three songs from Bitchin on their official MySpace. Bitchin' was produced by Jay Ruston and The Donnas.