While the latest single from Lykke Li, “BRON,” is notable for being co-written with composer Ludwig Göransson and being her first song entirely in Swedish (Tove Lo better keep up), let us reflect just a little bit longer on her September release of a cover of Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit, “I Will Survive.” Because, in all honesty, it’s time to let some other people besides Miley Cyrus have the monopoly on doing covers.
For a song that was such an overt banger of a club hit, it seems one of music’s great historical facts that Gaynor’s original version was intended as a B-side to “Substitute,” a track that sounds a lot like something Kylie Minogue would try to put out now as opposed to the authentic, pure disco of “I Will Survive.” For the latter to be considered a B-side smacks of the notion that it was some sort of acoustic oddity. Too emotional to be dressed up as danceable.
This, in fact, is what Li has turned it into, in a manner that is both chilling and unforgettable. Of course, she isn’t the first to slow down the tempo or rework the instrumentation. There’s also been memorable covers by Diana Ross and Cake (that’s right, Cake, of “Never There” and “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” fame). But no one, until this moment, has had the bold sense to render it in such a stripped down fashion, laying bare only the emotions that raw vocals can convey. Li, who showcased her chops amply in this regard with 2018’s so sad so sexy (followed up by 2019’s still sad still sexy), continues to do so as she wails with that signature opening “oh” as the piano-fied anthem of lonesome-tinged triumph is lent the tragedian flair of any great Shakespeare play.
Speaking to her lover as though facing him at the threshold of the door to her apartment, Li’s breathiness is indicative of the pain she endures by even agreeing to entertain him with a recap of her life since he left her: “And I grew… strong,” she seems to decide at the last minute as a means to describe her progress. The original single format of “I Will Survive” is a mere three minutes and fifteen seconds. Here, Li transforms it into five minutes and fourteen seconds of glorious, melodious sorrow. Sounding weak, as though she’s using her last available strength to say, “Go on now, go, walk out the door,” she is ready to let him go once again–this time of her own volition.
And yet, at the same, time we can tell she’s not finished berating him for his bravado in even having the gall to show up at her home–the one they formerly shared before his callous abandonment. So it is that she gathers resolve in her voice anew as she asserts, “Just turn around now/’Cause you’re not welcome anymore/Weren’t you the one who tried to break me with goodbye?/Did you think I’d crumble? Did you think I’d lay down and die?” Indeed, the minimalist “artwork” for the single is a crumpled piece of paper with the words “I Will Survive” scrawled across it.
Considering the present moment we’re living in, Li’s decision to choose this particular classic to cover feels like a battle cry everyone needs to be reminded of as she tries to shift our hopeless perspective to one that recalls how, even during the recession and decay of the 1970s, Gloria Gaynor still managed to insist, “As long as I know how to love/I know I will survive.” Oh but wait, who’s Gloria? Because this song all at once seems to have been destined to fall from the lips of someone as tortured and triumphant as Li, the woman who famously declared, “Sadness is a blessing.”
