"I Will Survive" Revisited

So my last blog post was about the different contexts in “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor and Cake. I was unaware of some other context. I will keep what I said about Cakes version being about a relationship break up but would like to look at Gloria Gaynor’s version a little differently.

 Here is a little context that I found when Gloria’s version came out. Gloria’s version came out in October 1978. I looked around on the internet to see what events happened in 1978 and I found that the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action in the case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in June 1978. Affirmative action as defined by Google is an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination especially in relation to employment or education; positive discrimination. So my guess is that racism was still a hot topic during this time.

So when you listen to it with that in mind, it can take on a different meaning. From the words that she is singing, it sounds like she might be singing about racism. A section of lyrics is “If I’d known for just one second you’d be back to bother me so now go, walk out the door, just turn around now cause your not welcome anymore…” That could be a person she is talking to or racism in general. If she had known racism would have been back to bother her, but its back so now she is telling it to go and leave because it is no longer welcome here.

Or maybe that is just over thinking it and she actually meant for it to be about a person.