Category: Radio 4
Date: 24.03.2005
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Gloria Gaynor's disco hit I Will Survive has itself survived to become one of the most important songs of empowerment for women as well as, in a wider context, a gay anthem, the French World Cup squad's signature tune, and the hen-night karaoke number one choice.
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Join Paul Gambaccini on Monday 25 April on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4 to find out how the disco song that started life as a B-side in 1979 has gained a reputation as one of the most empowering songs ever composed.
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Whether helping women through relationship crises, urging the French football team on to World Cup victory, saving the life of a capsized trans-Atlantic rower, or simply clearing the room of men during a hen-night karaoke - I Will Survive has built on its rhythm-pounding role as a source of self-esteem and courage.
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In Radio 4's documentary I Will Survive both men and women talk about what the song means to them.
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The rower who capsized, Elisabeth Hoff, was caught 400 miles off the Moroccan coast by a storm which turned her boat upside down.
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Clambering out on to the upturned keel, she perched on it for 11 hours singing the song over and over again.
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It was, she says, a song "that saved and changed my life".
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For one woman suffering from an intense depression over a break-up, a friend recorded it 17 times on to a DVD so she could take it with her in the car, at home, wherever she went.
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For a gay man, coming out in small town Australia, the song gave him the courage to fight prejudice and fear.
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For Gloria Gaynor herself, she recognised the song as a hit immediately and has never tired of singing it, though ironically the song was actually written by two men, Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren, great hitmakers of the disco era.
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Underscoring the programme, and breaking out from time to time, are the numerous different versions recorded by artists as varied as: the West Coast group Cake, Diana Ross, Billie Jo Spears, the thrash group Snuff and the Miami Mass Choir.
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And there is Gloria Gaynor's unequalled original beginning with that innocent tumble of piano arpeggios and the words that start so gently yet raise a yell of recognition - 'At first I was afraid I was petrified...'
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I Will Survive, 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4, Monday 25 April, 8.30pm
