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ANOHNI‘s moving cover of Gloria Gaynor‘s ‘I Will Survive’ is now available across streaming platforms – you can listen to it below.
- READ MORE: 30 covers that are better than the originals
The cover first arrived in October alongside footage of ANOHNI performing it live in the ’90s – which you can watch below. She shared it with a story about how Facebook once offered her $200,000 to use the song in an ad campaign which she declined.
The former Antony And The Johnsons frontwoman wrote: “In June, Facebook offered me 200,000$ to license an old live version of me singing ‘I Will Survive’ for an advertisement that represented Facebook as an advocate for small businesses.
“Although I really could have used the money, I said no because I didn’t want to be complicit in Facebook’s hosting of fake news which might enable the re-election of Donald Trump. They wrote back saying that they were placating other participants’ concerns by making donations to their charities of choice, in addition to paying them.
“I woke up the next morning and realized this isn’t even advertising; this is politics, and i don’t even know how deep this water is. This company Droga5 worked with Obama and Google and others. I had to walk away.
“A month later I saw the ad. Facebook had hired another singer to emulate my version of the song. It was a nauseating feeling.”
She continued: “We all know that Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and others now seem to be destroying our lives, our minds, our jobs, our cultures, and our societies’ ability to govern themselves.
“We as artists were the first ones to be led to the stall to begin feeding, and being drained by, companies including Apple and Facebook.
“And now as artists, we must be the first to leave. We must show that it is possible to live without Instagram, without Facebook, without Google and Amazon. We must endeavor to rebuild our lives and our communities, our private conversations, in ways that don’t rely on manipulative infrastructures and interfaces provided by the world’s richest and most malevolent corporations.
“After the Facebook debacle, i felt compelled to complete my studio version of “I Will Survive”. It was the first song I ever sang in nightclubs in NYC when I was 20 years old. I sang it hundreds of times. In those days I sang it thinking of Marsha P. Johnson and the underground queer community struggling to survive in the face of AIDS. Now it seems to me like an anthem for the future of life on earth.”
She concluded: “Obviously, Youtube is owned by Google. I haven’t closed all my accounts. But I want to talk to you about this; I want to be a part of this conversation.”
ANOHNI named Oren Bloedow, Max Moston and Alex Silva as collaborators on the cover, and she noted that the footage featured her and Chloe Dzubilo in 1992/94.
You can stream the cover on across Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music and more here.
Back in August, ANOHNI shared two new covers of Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ and Nina Simone’s ‘Be My Husband’.
Speaking about the cover of ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, ANOHNI said: “I recorded ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ with Kevin Barker one afternoon a few years ago. I listened to it recently and it reminded me of Now, a nausea of nostalgia for the suffering of the present, or even the future.”
She continued: “I did a couple of songs by Bob Dylan at that time, encouraged by Hal Willner, the producer who we lost to Covid 19 in April.”
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