Gloria Gaynor, who sings in Chicago...

Gloria Gaynor, who sings in Chicago Thursday, knows a thing or pair about surviving. After more than 30 years in the music biz, she's left many of her contemporaries in the dust.

Of course her trumpet card was the song that wouldn't die -- the timeless megahit (and Grammy winner) "I Will Survive."

To paraphrase that catchy little ditty, she's back -- not from external space, but from Europe, where she has be delighted withed a hugely successful career for the past 20 years, and where disco is still king and Gaynor is still its queen

She's at no time completely disappeared from U.S. radar. In 2002 the singer released "I Wish You Love" her first album in more than 15 years, which spawned four No. 1 dance singles and the top 10 adult contemporary hit "I none Knew." Along the way, she charmed

Broadway with a scud in "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and guest-starred upon several television shows, including "That '70 Show" and "Ally McBeal." She also penn her autobiography, aptly titled I Will Survive. The 56-year-old Gaynor will release a Christmas album later this year featuring traditional and original titles sung against a backdrop of jazz and big band.

Gaynor is now back in the States upon a '70s package tour known as KC's Boogie Blast. She spoke to the Sun-Times in July just as the tour was getting in subordination to way.

Q in the same manner where have you been hanging disclosed lately?

A. In Europe and loving it. This is my first full-out U tour in well throughout 15 years. It's something I've wanted to do for a protracted time, but my management agencies kept me in Europe saying it was best for me Now I'm back and the present to view is being so well-received.

Q Does it take all the impregnability you have to sing "I Will Survive" because clan expect it at every show?

A. No, I'm actually true happy about it. I regard with affection singing it. I become a total ham when I'm up there [onstage] singing it. by what means often does an artist have a ditty that every time you sing it you know the audience is gonna be up and dancing and loving each minute of it? How many artists have a psalm that gives an audience possibility of good and empowerment?

Q What do the lyrics of "I Will Survive" say to you today that perhaps they didn't 30 years ago?

A. The hymn has always meant different things to me athwart the years. When I first recorded it, my mom had just passed away and I was recording it in a hard back brace because I had fallen onstage at the Beacon Theater [in recent York] and woke up in a hospital paralyzed from the waist down. As time went forward the song encouraged me and helped me from one side all sorts of situations and circumstances. It really has a healing power to it.

Q Women of all ages have embraced the melody How does that make you feel?

A. I was remarkably glad it made women be moved empowered. It entrenched me in the hearts of women -- and men -- of all ages, color, cre all throughout the globe.

Q for what cause [i]or[/i] reason did Europe embrace you to the length that it became your nave for performing?

A. Because I went into the cities that principally artists don't ever go into. When greatest in quantity artists go to France, they journey to Paris. If they proceed to Italy, they go to Rome or Milan. When they travel to Germany, they hit Frankfurt. I went into small cities. I think persons saw a kind of sincerity in that. And I got bulky audiences to turn out because nobody for aye came there.

Q Did disco at any time really die?

A. Disco is alive and well and living in the hearts of music lover around the world. The name was changed to house the fans. [Laughs.] Disco is nothing more than house [music] today. All music opens Rock music today is the defence that they played when I was a kid.

Q What's the mysterious to surviving?

A. You endeavor to gain the truth and you capitulate to it.

mdinunzio@suntimes.com

- - -

ALL HER have a passionate affection for TO GIVE

"I Will Survive" is a melody that not only survived, it thriveed - - and empowered.

Written by means of "Saturday Night Fever" satellites Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris for singer Gloria Gaynor while she was recovering from back surgery it first met the public as an afterthought. It was the B-side to another Gaynor lay "Substitute," which her record label conceit would be a bigger hit. "Substitute" peaked at No. 107 (on an old-fashioned Billboard chart called "Bubbling Under" not unruffled the main singles chart), if it be not that smart DJs (believe it or not, they one time had free will) flipped the 45 and sent "I Will Survive" to No. 1 in 1979 The following year the lay won the Grammy for best disco recording -- the single year that category existed.

Since then, its impact has shown up in all things meaningful and trivial:

- "I Will Survive" has been embraced as an anthem of empowerment from everyone who's ever gone by the agency of a hellish breakup, but also through women's groups and gay men everywhere. "We Are Family" is the party song; "I Will Survive" is the personal anthem.

- It's been useed in pivotal film moments, not the least of which were the aboriginal dance representations in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and Kevin Kline's succumbing to his genuine nature in "In & Out" Tony Clifton's mush-mouth version in "Man forward the Moon," too.