‘The Masked Singer’ Gloria Gaynor Reveals ‘I Will Survive’ Was Supposed to Be a B-Side Tune – and She Really Feels About Harry Styles’ Cover

Singer Gloria Gaynor was revealed as the mermaid on The Masked Singer and shared that she did the show to see if her iconic voice was recognizable without judges seeing her face.

Close friends knew she was underneath the mermaid costume. And Gaynor wanted to appear on the show just to have fun. She also shared some backstory behind her iconic anthem, “I Will Survive,” sharing that it was never meant to be a hit single. Plus did she shade Harry Styles for “forgetting” her when he covered the song with Lizzo?

‘The Masked Singer’ mermaid Gloria Gaynor recalls ‘I Will Survive’ as a B-side

“The record company had asked me to record another song,” she recalled on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast..”They’d gotten a new president over from England and he’d had a hit with this song in England. He wanted me to repeat that here and he specifically wanted me to record it.

“So he sent me out to LA to record that song. When I asked the producers what was gonna be the B side, they first said they didn’t know because they hadn’t really chosen one yet,” she continued. “They asked me what kind of songs I like. I said, well, I like songs that have good strong lyrics, meaningful, touch people’s hearts have good melodies. And they said, ‘We think you’re the one we’ve been waiting for to record this song that we wrote two years ago.'”

She wondered if Harry Styles ‘forgot’ about her when he covered ‘I Will Survive’

“So I realized then that I read it and I was like, what are you stupid? You’re gonna put this on the B side. This is a hit song.” She added, “I could tell right away because I had had surgery on my spine, I was standing there recording in a back brace and hoping that I’d survive that. And my mother had passed away a few years prior and hoping I’d survive that. And so this song was very encouraging and uplifting and inspiring to me.”

Gaynor acknowledged that “I Will Survive” became an anthem for many. “It celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit, you know?” she asserted. “And whether you could verbalize that or not. You get it in your spirit, and the song just cheers you on to accomplish whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish to get through whatever you’re trying to get through. Get past whatever you’re trying to get past.”

She also joked that Harry Styles seemed to “forget” about her when he covered the song with Lizzo. “I did see when he did my song and did it with Lizzo and I’m like, excuse me, did you forget somebody?” she said. “But was nice to see, ya younger generation not just liking the song and listening to the song, but actually performing it. It’s flattering to me, I think.”

Gloria Gaynor is a fan of ‘The Masked Singer’

Gaynor is a fan of The Masked Singer and had a great time on the show. “I’d seen it a number of times. I don’t see it as often as I’d like to because I travel so much. But I’d seen it and it just looked like a lot of fun. I wanted to know if people will be able to recognize my voice without seeing my face,” she said.

She also went into the show just to have fun. “I didn’t really care what the outcome was. I just wanted to be on the show, be a part of it,” she said. “The fun and the intrigue. It was so much intrigue … you had to be all covered up. Everything … when you approach the theater, the studio, and when you went from the dressing room to any other part of the studio, you had to be all covered up. And so people couldn’t even see the color of your skin. It was fun.”