'It has not slowed down one bit': Gloria Gaynor shares the amazing story of 'I Will Survive'

All Gloria Gaynor had to do was read the lyrics to "I Will Survive," the empowering breakup anthem that took her to the top of Billboard's Hot 100, to know that song was something special.

She was in the studio to cut a disco reinvention of a song the Righteous Brothers had recorded three years earlier as her next single when she asked producers Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris if they had any thoughts on a potential B-side.

"They said, 'Well, we don't know. What kind of songs do you like?'" Gaynor recalls. "I said I like songs that are thoughtful and meaningful, that touch people's hearts and have good melodies. Because people like to sing along."

They told Gaynor, who plays the Celebrity Theatre Friday, Jan. 28, "Well, we think you're the one that we've been waiting for to record this song we wrote two years ago." 

They didn't have a demo of "I Will Survive" in the studio so they wrote out the lyrics and handed the paper to Gaynor. 

"I said, 'What are you, stupid?! You're gonna put this on the B-side?! They said 'That's the deal we made.' I said, 'I don't care what deal you made. If it's up to me, it won't stay on the B-side.'"

How a Studio 54 DJ helped 'I Will Survive' break out

They recorded the song with the time they had left at the end of a three-hour session and presented it to Polydor Records. Gaynor says Polydor executives didn't want to listen to the song at first because the president had chosen "Substitute" to be the single.

So Gaynor and the song's producers went behind the label's back and took it to the only power higher than a major-label CEO in those days.

"We took it to Studio 54, to the DJ there," Gaynor says. "He played it and gave it to his DJ friends, as we had asked him to. And as they say, the rest is history."

The single, with "Substitute" as the A-side, was released Oct. 23, 1978.

The flipside, "I Will Survive," started taking off early the following year, replacing "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" by Rod Stewart at the top of Billboard's Hot 100 on March 10 for the first of three non-consecutive weeks at No. 1.

The longevity of 'I Will Survive'

In 1980, it earned the singer her first Grammy: Best Disco Recording.

Twenty years later, it topped a list on VH1 of the 100 Greatest Dance Songs. 

It finished second in 2014 on a list in Rolling Stone of the Best Disco Songs.

In 2016, the Library of Congress deemed Gaynor's recording to be "culturally, historically or artistically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Recording Registry.

The star was invited to ring in 2021 at Times Square in New York City with a pandemic-compatible version of "I Will Survive." 

"I don't think there was a better song for that particular New Year's Eve because of COVID and everything that everyone was going through, hoping that we will survive," Gaynor says.

"I mean, we know we will. We know this too shall pass. But oh, the path."

By January 2022, the extended, eight-minute version of "I Will Survive" had been streamed more than 291 million times on Spotify, a service that didn't exist before 2006.

"It's incredible," Gaynor says of the single's enduring appeal.

"I've always felt like that song was a gift from God to me. I guess I should've expected it to endure. It celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit, which resonates with everybody."

The song has personal significance for Gloria Gaynor

It certainly resonated with Gaynor, who drew on personal experience to power through those lyrics with conviction. 

She was in a back brace at the time, having fallen off stage while performing at New York City's Beacon Theatre.

"I'd had surgery on my spine," she says. "I fell backwards over the monitor, jumped up, finished the show, went out to breakfast, went home, went to sleep and woke up the next morning paralyzed from the waist down."

She also applied the lyrics of "I Will Survive" to the death of her mother eight years earlier ("something I never thought I'd survive") and the impact spending five months in the hospital had had on her career.

"The record company had called and said that they weren't going to renew my contract," Gaynor says. "So there I was. I had lost my apartment. I'd lost everything I had. And now I don't even have a career."

The singer poured all that emotion into a transcendent tribute to the power and resilience of the human spirit. 

She felt it in 2006 after her divorce from Linwood Smith, the manager she married in 1979.

"The night after I got the divorce decree, I did a marathon version of 'I Will Survive,'" she recalls, with a laugh.

'I Will Survive' merchandise

In 2013, Gaynor published a book, "We Will Survive: True Stories of Encouragement, Inspiration, and the Power of Song."

"Ever since 'I Will Survive' became a hit song, everywhere I go, I get stories," Gaynor says.

"It has not slowed down one bit. To this day. I get stories from mostly women but people who come from broken homes, people with cancer, people with all kinds of diseases and maladies and difficulties in their lives about how this song has uplifted, encouraged, inspired and empowered them to make it through the difficult times in their lives."

She decided to share some of those stories in a book. 

"How inspiring would it be to hear stories of people who have already gone through perhaps what you're going through and yet come out the other side victorious?" she says.

More recently, she launched a line of merchandise at Amazon called I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor, featuring a range of inspirational designs on t-shirts, sweatshirts and smartphone accessories.

"The ones I like the most are the ones with the emoji we call Lil GG," Gaynor says. 

"One is a doctor. One's a lawyer. One's an astronaut. A vet, a secretary, all these different professions to help young girls understand that they can achieve whatever they can conceive."

Gaynor released a Grammy-winning gospel album in 2019

Gaynor achieved a dream in 2019 with the release of "Testimony," her first gospel album, which won a Grammy (her second) for Best Roots Gospel Album. 

"It was not only an honor because this is an accolade that comes from your peers and people who know what it means and what it takes to attain that recognition," she says. 

"But also because it was something that I had been wanting to do for many years and my ex-management kept putting it off with 'Yeah, yeah. We'll get around to it after we win a Grammy.' As God would have it, we didn't get the Grammy until we did the album."

Gaynor recorded the album in Nashville with guest spots by Yolanda Adams, Mike Farris, Jason Crabb and Bart Millard of MercyMe.

"I just wanted to share the joy, (and) be uplifting, encouraging and inspiring in a way that's not superficial," Gaynor says. 

She co-wrote several tracks, including the autographical "Back on Top," which shares an underlying faith in our ability to overcome with the disco classic that remains her calling card. 

"I had some things to overcome and get past after I divorced and parted ways with my ex-manager," she says.

How Gloria Gaynor and her hit song remain relevant

More recently, Gaynor collaborated with Kylie Minogue on a remix of a track called “Can’t Stop Writing Songs About You” for a "Guest List" edition of Minogue's album "Disco."

Young artists continue to draw inspiration from the golden age of disco, despite how often the music was trivialized and unfairly dismissed at the time as a fad.

"The thing disco music accomplished that it never got credit for is the fact that it's the only music in history to bring together people from every race, creed, nationality and age group," Gaynor says. 

As for the disco backlash, Gaynor laughs it off. 

"I always believed that was driven by people whose bottom line was being negatively affected by the popularity of disco," Gaynor says. 

"They needed to squash it. So they were doing everything they could. I mean, to have a burning of the disco records? Why did you even have disco records to burn if you didn't like them? Nobody goes out and buys something just to destroy it."

Gloria Gaynor

When: 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28.

Where: Celebrity Theatre, 440 N. 32nd St., Phoenix.

Admission: $44-$74.

Details: 602-267-1600, celebritytheatre.com. 

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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