GAYNOR
Gloria

• 1. Career revival

Gloria Gaynor is an American singer, best known for the disco era hits "I Will Survive" (1978), "Let Me Know (I Have a Right)" (1979), "I Am What I Am" (1983), and her version of "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1974).

Career revival

Gaynor's career received a revitalizing spark in the early and mid 1990s with the worldwide disco revival movement. During the late 1990s, she dabbled in acting for a while, guest starring on The Wayans Bros, That '70s Show (singing "I Will Survive"), and Ally McBeal, before doing a limited engagement performance in Broadway's Smokey Joe's Cafe. In 2001, Gaynor performed "I Will Survive" at the 30th Anniversary concert for Michael Jackson.

Gaynor returned to the recording studio in 2002, releasing her first album in over 15 years, I Wish You Love. The two singles released from the album, "Just Keep Thinking About You" and "I Never Knew", both topped Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play. Both singles also secured moderate to heavy dance format radio airplay. The latter song also charted No. 30 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. In 2004, Gaynor re-released her 1997 album The Answer (also released under the title What a Life) as a follow-up to her successful album I Wish You Love. The album includes her club hit "Oh, What a Life".

In late 2002, Gaynor appeared with R&B stars on the "Rhythm, Love, and Soul" edition of the PBS series American Soundtrack. Her performance of the disco hit "I Will Survive" and new single "I Never Knew" was included on the accompanying live album that was released in 2004.

On September 19, 2005, Gaynor was honored twice when she and her music were inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame, in the "Artist" category, along with fellow disco artists Chic and Sylvester. Her classic anthem "I Will Survive" was inducted under the "Records" category. In January 2008, the American Diabetes Association named Gaynor the Honorary Spokesperson of the 2008 "NYC Step Out to Fight Diabetes Walk".

More television appearances followed in the late 2000s with 2009 appearances on The John Kerwin Show, The Wendy Williams Show, and The View to promote the 30th anniversary of "I Will Survive". In 2010, she appeared on Last Comic Standing and The Tonight Show.

Forty years after its release, Gaynor continues to ride the success of "I Will Survive", touring the country and the world over and performing her signature song on dozens of TV shows. A few successful remixes of the song during the 1990s and 2000s along with new versions of the song by Lonnie Gordon, Diana Ross, Chantay Savage, rock group Cake and others, as well as constant recurrent airplay on nearly all soft AC and rhythmic format radio stations have helped to keep the song in the mainstream. Gaynor said of her biggest hit in a 2012 interview: "It feels great to have such a song like that because I get kids five and six years old telling me they like the song, and then people seventy-five and eighty. It's quite an honor." The song was revived yet again in 2015 for the film The Martian, where it is used at the end as the credits roll.

Gaynor released a contemporary Christian album in late 2013.

On May 16, 2015, Gaynor was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music by Dowling College. In 2017, she made a cameo appearance as a flight attendant in a Capital One commercial, while Samuel L. Jackson, Charles Barkley, and Spike Lee sang "I Will Survive".

In 2016, "I Will Survive" was selected for induction into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.

On May 6, 2017, Gaynor performed with her band at the Library of Congress' celebration of disco music at Bibliodiscotheque, a disco dance party in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building.

Due to the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Harvey on the state of Texas in August 2017, Gaynor rewrote the lyrics to "I Will Survive", changing the title to "Texas Will Survive", and posted a video of herself singing the song on Twitter on August 30, 2017.

In December 2019 "I Will Survive" trended on TikTok and Gaynor performed the dance at the LifeMinute TV studios in Times Square, NY.

In January 2020, she won her second Grammy Award in her career, 40 years after her first, for her roots gospel album Testimony.

In 2021, Gaynor returned to disco music when she recorded "Can't Stop Writing Songs About You" with Australian singer Kylie Minogue for the reissue of Minogue's fifteenth studio album Disco entitled Disco: Guest List Edition. The collaboration occurred following Gaynor praising Minogue for keeping Disco alive with her album of the same name.

In April 2021, Gaynor recorded "Brand New" with the veteran Contemporary Christian band MercyMe.

In 2022, Gaynor competed in season eight of The Masked Singer as "Mermaid" who rode on a giant clam-like vehicle that the Men in Black had to push around. After being eliminated on "Andrew Lloyd Webber Night" alongside Mario Cantone as "Maize", Gaynor did her performance of "I Will Survive".