Disco queen Gloria Gaynor is heading back to the recording studio this year…..at the age of 80.
The double Grammy winner aims to release a new album an astonishing 46 years after her iconic hit I Will Survive became a worldwide dancefloor sensation in 1978.
Gloria, who says her 21st studio album will reflect her soul, gospel and R&B roots, confirmed: “I’ll be recording in Nashville” as well as revealing she wants to launch her own line of shoes and clothing to accompany the perfume range ‘Survive by Gloria Gaynor’ that went on sale last year.
The singer, who turned 80 last September, told of her remarkable career comeback on the eve of this week’s US debut of a new documentary – Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive – that will play in more than 900 movie theaters nationwide for one-day special screenings on February 13.
It tracks her often-tortured private life, from an impoverished childhood during which she was sexually abused, and her rise to stardom that was almost wrecked by a crippling spinal injury.
READ MORE: Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive singer thought she was ‘going to die’ from dangerous surgery
It also tells of Gloria’s “devastating grief” over the gruesome 1995 murder of her sister Irma, who was savagely beaten to death during a random street robbery.
Gloria further opens up about her sadness at never having had children of her own and tells how her 2005 divorce from her husband of 26 years – her former manager Linwood Simon – left her almost broke.
Despite her age, she now insists however: “I would date. Absolutely! I love men and I prefer male company. Unfortunately, men don’t seem to really want to be friends.”
Though she may lack male companionship, the veteran performer says she feels “exceptionally proud” to have recently moved into the “dream house” she designed and had built for herself in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey – barely a half-hour drive from the house in Newark in which she grew up.
Gloria declared: “My childhood home was so raggedy that someone broke into it by knocking a door off its hinges. We were never able to put the door back because the wood was so rotten that it wouldn’t hold the nails.
“Many years ago, I asked God for an apartment that didn’t have any holes in the walls. Now when I show my new house to close friends, I tell them God is an overachiever!”
