Chocolate-chip cookies inspire singer's tour

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Donna Summer says she approached her summer tour like a chocolate-chip cookie.

The 59-year-old singer said that for the first time, she is incorporating all the music from a new album and most of her hits into the show. In the past, she's used just a few new songs, but never all of them.

"I tried to put them in in a way that they still get the oldies mixed in, so that every few minutes it's like a familiar taste," she told AP Radio in a recent phone interview.

"Then it's like, `Ooh, this is good. I like this. Aw! There's a piece of chocolate!"' Summer said. "It's like eating a chocolate-chip cookie for the first time. There's the cookie, and then there's the chocolate chip."

Her tour kicks off Saturday in Vienna, Virginia.

Summer described her show as "a concert with elements of drama" that she thinks fans will enjoy.

"Hopefully they come to have a good time because I don't think that I represent a bad time," she said. "You go in kind of having a sense of, this is going to be a party, this is going to be fun. In the process of this party, I will try to impart some things and information to them that they'll go home with that hopefully will stick with them."

Her new album, "Crayons," is Summer's first full studio album in 17 years.

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