Even when Gloria Gaynor was a child, she wanted to sing. After all, her father played in nightclubs and her brothers sang in a gospel group. Still, as one of the two youngest children in the house, she was always considered too young to go out and sing with everybody else. They didn’t know that in her heart of hearts she wanted to sing until she found a gig at a night club in Newark when she was eighteen. It wasn’t until she was thirty that she got her first bit of success in 1973.1 Her career was gaining momentum, her name was becoming better known when in 1978 she tripped and fell backwards on stage during a performance. For a little while, she was paralyzed from the waist down and needed spinal surgery. Her finances took a serious hit and she almost lost her record contract. But then, still wearing a neck brace, Gloria Gaynor recorded, “I Will Survive.” Though, “it took all the strength [she] had not to fall apart,” she certainly survived and she shot to the top of the charts.2
Caught up in the fame and the success, as so many do, she also got caught up in the world of drugs and alcohol. One day in 1982, she said, “[I] literally felt the Holy Spirit grab me by the collar, stand me on my feet and say, ‘that’s enough.’” She remembered her brothers’ voices singing those gospel songs and she felt that call to re-focus her life. She started recording some gospel music along with her other disco songs. She realized that, with her fame, she was in a position to share what she had learned of God’s love and comfort and grace on a wider stage. She said she realized that her calling was an invitation to play, “to folks outside of Christian circles and it’s just something I have to do. It’s absolutely a calling.”3
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Gaynor
[2] https://www.crossrhythms.co.uk/articles/music/Gloria_Gaynor__The_disco_diva_steps_into_the_gospel_arena/66388/p1/
[3] Ibid.