I Will Survive: A B-Side Nobody Wanted to Release

I will survive was a B-side, written by a man who'd just been fired and sung by a woman recovering from spinal surgery.

Nobody at the label planned to push it.

Gloria Gaynor didn't wait for permission.

She carried the record to a nightclub herself and asked the DJ to play it.

Within months it was the biggest song in the country.

Gloria Gaynor, photographed in 1976.

Image credit: Photo by Rob Mieremet / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons and the Dutch National Archives.

The Fired Songwriter and the B-Side No One Wanted

Dino Fekaris Wrote It After Motown Let Him Go

I will survive started as one songwriter's answer to getting fired.

Dino Fekaris had spent almost seven years as a staff writer at Motown Records.

The label let him go in the mid-1970s.

He later described sitting unemployed, watching television, when one of his own older songs came on.

That moment pushed him to write something about refusing to be finished.

He teamed with Freddie Perren, another Motown veteran, to turn the idea into a full song.

Neither man wrote it with Gloria Gaynor in mind at first.

Gloria Gaynor Fought for Her Own B-Side

Polydor Records brought Perren in to produce a completely different song for Gaynor.

"Substitute" was meant to be her real single.

I will survive got tacked on as the B-side almost as an afterthought.

Gaynor heard something in it the label didn't.

She pushed to have it released as the A-side and got turned down.

So she carried copies of the record to Studio 54 herself and asked resident DJ Richie Kaczor to play it.

The crowd's reaction was immediate and impossible to ignore.

Radio stations started flipping the single within months, entirely because of what happened on that dance floor.

She Recorded I Will Survive in a Back Brace

A Fall at the Beacon Theatre

Gloria Gaynor wasn't performing this song from a comfortable place.

She'd recently fallen on stage during a show at New York's Beacon Theatre.

The fall caused a serious spinal injury.

She needed surgery and a lengthy recovery afterward.

She recorded her vocal for i will survive while still healing, reportedly in a back brace.

The Voice on the Record Was Recovering in Real Time

Gaynor has said the lyrics landed differently once she was living them.

"When I first heard the lyrics, I felt like this is my story," she later said.

A song written by a fired songwriter became the real soundtrack to a singer's physical recovery.

That doubled layer of real hardship is easy to miss under the song's disco shine.

Neither Fekaris's firing nor Gaynor's injury shows up in most quick summaries of the song.

Both are documented directly by the people who lived them.

The Song Outgrew Its Own Original Story

I will survive found a second identity within a few years of its release.

The song found new meaning far beyond its own original story.

The LGBTQ community adopted it as an anthem, arriving barely a decade after the Stonewall uprising.

Gaynor has embraced that meaning rather than distancing herself from it.

She has described the song as a classic emblem of gay culture in the post-Stonewall and AIDS eras.

The Library of Congress cited that same broader cultural weight when it added her recording to the National Recording Registry in 2016.

Three Weeks at Number One, a Grammy That Never Repeated

The Real Chart Run

I will survive spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1979.

This site's own year-end chart archive confirms that same three-week run at the top.

It eventually sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.

That's a massive total for a song the label originally didn't want released at all.

It has since been added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry for its cultural significance.

The Only Year Disco Had Its Own Grammy

I will survive won Best Disco Recording at the 1980 Grammy Awards.

That category existed for exactly one year before the Recording Academy retired it.

The song also picked up nominations for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

No other disco single ever won that specific award, since it never came back.

Curious what other decade-defining hit matches your mood right now?

Try the Mood Song Matcher and see what comes up.

Or pull a random hit from the whole decade with the Random 70s Song Generator.

Another disco-era anthem topped the charts the same year under very different circumstances.

Read that story in Stayin Alive: Built on a Magazine Story That Was Fake.

Frequently Asked Questions

What inspired i will survive?

I will survive was written by Dino Fekaris about getting fired from his staff songwriter job at Motown Records after nearly seven years there.

He and co-writer Freddie Perren, also a Motown veteran, channeled that experience into a song about refusing to fall apart.

Gloria Gaynor then made the lyric her own during her own real recovery.

Why was i will survive originally a b-side?

Polydor Records signed Gloria Gaynor to record "Substitute" as the planned A-side of her single, treating i will survive as a throwaway B-side.

Gaynor believed in the song and personally brought copies to Studio 54, asking DJ Richie Kaczor to play it.

Crowd response there pushed radio stations to flip the single within months.

Was gloria gaynor injured when she recorded i will survive?

Yes, Gloria Gaynor had recently fallen on stage at New York's Beacon Theatre and suffered a serious spinal injury requiring surgery.

She recorded i will survive while still recovering, reportedly wearing a back brace in the studio.

She has said the lyrics felt like they were written specifically for what she was living through.

How many weeks was i will survive number one?

I will survive spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1979.

This site's own year-end chart archive confirms the same three-week run at the top.

It went on to sell more than 15 million copies worldwide, an enormous total for a song that started life as a B-side.

Did i will survive win a Grammy?

I will survive won Best Disco Recording at the 1980 Grammy Awards, the only year that category ever existed.

It also picked up nominations for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

No other disco single ever won that specific Grammy category, since it was retired after one year.