That's when she had her hits: "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1974) and "I Will Survive" (1979). "Never Can Say Goodbye" was a remake of a Jackson 5ive song from just three years before, but she recorded it at the very dawn of the Disco Era, and it was the first record at the #1 position of the first-ever Billboard Dance Hits chart.
"I Will Survive" was a disco song about getting over a trip to Dumpville, USA, and it must have been played over a billion times in 1979 on radio, tv, jukeboxes and the sound that goes around in my head and I wish it would stop. I never cared for disco, and it went far beyond the insistent trump-trump-trump of the beat. Everything that sounds like that is annoying.And the lifestyle of the people who worked at hardware stores and offices just to get enough money to go disco dancing at night, and also pretend to jump off bridges, is well chronicled in the movie "Saturday Night Fever." Try to watch that now without wanting to join Bobby C in taking that same plunge.
And for that entire decade, you could never find a 100% cotton shirt. Everything was that polyester, a synthetic fabric to wear while dancing to synthetic music.
But that's just me. Listen, just this year, the Library of Congress called Gloria Gaynor's record "culturally, historically, or artistically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Recording Registry, where it will take its rightful place along with classic recordings such as "Honolulu Cake Walk" by Vess Ossman.
And Gloria Gaynor was talking to Rolling Stone magazine, and she thinks that there wouldn't be so much terrorism if there were more disco.
"It was a time when people came together," she said. "It was every nationality and color and age group. Disco had that thing of camaraderie. It was an upbeat and happy time. If disco had stuck around, we don't how much less terrorism we might have in the world now. It puts everyone in a good mood."
Almost everyone.
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