Gloria Gaynor.

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

Of course her winning card 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 exterior space, but from Europe, where she has have the advantage [i]or[/i] blessing ofed 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 not ever Knew." Along the way, she charmed

Broadway with a step quickly 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 onward a '70s package tour known as KC's Boogie Blast. She spoke to the Sun-Times in July just as the tour was getting beneath way.

Q with equal reason where have you been hanging abroad lately?

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

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

A. No, I'm actually true happy about it. I like singing it. I become a total ham when I'm up there [onstage] singing it. for what cause often does an artist have a canticle 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 canticle 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 strain has always meant different things to me through 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 of recent origin York] and woke up in a hospital paralyzed from the waist down. As time went onward the song encouraged me and helped me between the walls of all sorts of situations and circumstances. It really has a healing power to it.

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

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

Q with what intent 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 chiefly artists go to France, they journey to Paris. If they advance to Italy, they go to Rome or Milan. When they travel to Germany, they hit Frankfurt. I went into small cities. I think race saw a kind of sincerity in that. And I got cyclopean audiences to turn out because nobody evermore came there.

Q Did disco evermore really die?

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

Q What's the shrouded to surviving?

A. You pursue the truth and you part with to it.

mdinunzio@suntimes.com

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ALL HER be fond of TO GIVE

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

Written by the agency 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 canzonet "Substitute," which her record label thinking would be a bigger hit. "Substitute" peaked at No. 107 (on an ancient Billboard chart called "Bubbling Under" not unruffled the main singles chart), further smart DJs (believe it or not, they formerly 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 and nothing else 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 by means of everyone who's ever gone from one side a hellish breakup, but also at women's groups and gay men everywhere. "We Are Family" is the party song; "I Will Survive" is the personal anthem.

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

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