Essay on Cake’s “I Will Survive”

(Originally written for the 2022 MarchXNess Tournament, “March Faxness: Cover Songs”.)

It can be a tricky proposition as an artist when you make the decision to cover a song. Primarily because you have no control over what the original artist might think about your interpretation of their work. For example, when Johnny Cash covered Nine Inch Nails’ song “Hurt”,  Trent Reznor, the songwriter and lead singer of the band, was so moved by the song that he said, “[T]hat song isn’t mine anymore.”

Gloria Gaynor does not feel the same way about Cake’s cover of her disco anthem “I Will Survive.” Gaynor, a devout Christian, had a problem with a change to the end of the first verse, where the phrase “…stupid lock” is replaced in the cover with, “…fucking lock”. That simple edit was enough to cause her to dislike the entire cover version.

It is perfectly fine for Ms. Gaynor to dislike this alteration to her signature song. It’s a shame that she dislikes it so much, though, because the band did one of the things many people consider to be important for a cover performance: they truly made the song their own. It sounds like a Cake song, which in and of itself is polarizing.

Cake’s version of “I Will Survive” takes one of the biggest, brassiest disco songs ever and reworks it on multiple levels. In the original version, after an opening piano glissando, the song slowly builds during the first verse into the thumping disco anthem renowned at clubs around the world. Gaynor’s passion came from her connection to the lyrics, as she was dealing with her own personal struggles during recording, including being in a back brace after a fall on stage and fighting with the record label about the song’s commercial potential.

Cake opens with a mushy sounding electric guitar strumming the chords of the songs before the bass, drums, and vocals come in. Nothing big and brassy about this start, but instead it’s grimy in an almost post-grunge sense. John McCrea delivers a sort of spoken-word performance in a relatively monotone manner. Again, it sounds like a Cake song—for better or for worse.

“I Will Survive” is one of three cover songs on their sophomore album Fashion Nugget. McCrea states that their cover version is not supposed to be a joke, and that irony is not at the core of his performance. In an interview with Billboard Magainze, McCrea says, “The ‘disco sucks’ movement was weirdly white supremacist, I think that’s partially why everybody just assumed it must be a joke song.”

There is an earnest honesty in the performance if you listen. Part of what throws people off, especially if you are not familiar with Cake’s overall body of work, is the sprechstimme delivery. The monotonous recitation of the lyrics changes the song. Instead of being a song about fierce independence from a bad relationship, where the protagonist summons the strength to kick a former lover back out of their life, the cover sits firmly in a place of resignation. It becomes a song about survival not based on standing back up on your own two feet, but rather a song about survival in a battle of attrition.

If Gaynor’s protagonist is reclaiming her time from the loser she kicked to the curb, and vociferously declares that they can leave again and never darken her door, McCrea’s protagonist is displaying fatigue and exhaustion. “Oh, no. Not again,” he seems to be saying. However, this is where the word “fucking” shows its power. While resignation is present in McCrea’s delivery, by talking about changing the “fucking lock” shows that the protagonist is not disaffected and detached, but still has strong feelings about their ex. They don’t want them back. They aren’t going to just sit by and let them hang out. Like Gaynor, they want this person gone, too.

Cake released Fashion Nugget in 1996. 1996 was also the year I went off to college. It was the year I had my first girlfriend, although I broke it off with her a few months after the start of the spring semester. Our relationship was brief, and I have no idea if she played “I Will Survive” after we broke up. Vainly, I want to think she played Gaynor’s version of the song after we broke up.

Odds are she probably would have played Cake’s version instead.

I wouldn’t blame her if she did.