Flashdance... What a Feeling


"Flashdance... What a Feeling" is a song from the 1983 film Flashdance with music by Giorgio Moroder and lyrics by Keith Forsey and the song's performer, Irene Cara. The song spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the charts around the world. It was awarded Gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies and won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song and earned Cara the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. In 2023, the song was chosen by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.
Moroder had been asked to score the film, and Cara and Forsey wrote most of the lyrics after they were shown the last scene, in which the main character dances at an audition for a group of judges. They felt that the dancer's ambition to succeed could act as a metaphor for achieving any dream a person has and wrote lyrics that described what it feels like when music inspires someone to dance. The song was used for that scene as well as during the opening credits.
The song was the first single to be released from the soundtrack album and received positive reviews. Because Flashdance was going to be released in mid-April of that year, Casablanca Records released the single in March to market the film. The unexpected success at the box office resulted in stores across the US selling out of both the single and its parent album just days after Flashdance was in theaters.
The success of the song made it clear to Cara that she was not receiving royalties stipulated in her recording contract, and she took legal action against her label in order to be compensated. The backlash that she claims she suffered in retaliation for filing a lawsuit left her feeling shut out of the entertainment industry as she struggled to find work. Although she began receiving royalties for the recordings she made for them, the label and its owner declared bankruptcy and claimed that they were unable to pay her the $1.5million settlement she was awarded by a Los Angeles Superior Court.

Background and writing

After winning the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1979 for Midnight Express, Giorgio Moroder worked with Flashdance producer Jerry Bruckheimer on the 1980 film American Gigolo, and Bruckheimer contacted Moroder in 1982 to see if he would be interested in composing the music for the new film, which told the story of Alex Owens, a young woman who dreams of becoming a ballerina and must overcome her fear of auditioning before a panel of judges. Despite his lack of interest due to other commitments, Moroder came up with some music that was "a very rough sketch". He thought it might fit the project well and sent it in before filming began. The demo was the music for what became "Flashdance... What a Feeling", but Moroder did not agree to composing the score until after seeing a video of a rough cut of the film, which completed shooting on December 30, 1982. He then delegated the writing of the lyrics to his session drummer, Keith Forsey, who started on the task by himself but later received help from Irene Cara. She described Forsey as "very personable, just a sweetheart. He was very funny. We definitely clicked."
Cara received her big break in 1980 in the role of Coco Hernandez, a student at the High School of Performing Arts, in the movie Fame. The soundtrack album included two chart hits that Cara recorded: the title song, which got as high as number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "Out Here on My Own", which peaked at number 19. When the record label for the soundtrack, RSO, went out of business, one of its executives, Al Coury, convinced her to join his newly-formed Network Records, and the title track from her first album there, Anyone Can See, reached number 42 on the Hot 100 during a run of 18 weeks that began in November 1981. She was working on an album and looking for a producer in early 1983 when she was contacted by Paramount Pictures to provide lyrics for the new soundtrack song. Although Moroder had shown interest in working with her once she had success with Fame, she was reluctant about being compared to another singer he had produced, Donna Summer. "But with 'Flashdance,'" Cara explained, "we were thrown together by Paramount."
Cara and Forsey were shown the last scene of the film, in which Alex auditions, to have a sense of what the lyrics should be. They were then driven from the screening to Giorgio's studio to record the song and, during the trip, were able to come up with most of the words that Cara would sing. She said, "I had no idea what the movie was about or anything. It did seem to me to have a similar look in regards to Fame, so I figured, well, this is another performing arts film." She told Forsey that she thought the lyrics should describe the feeling of dance and credits him with coming up with the lyric that inspired the working title for the song, "Dancing for Your Life". She explained how the song became "a metaphor about a dancer, how she's in control of her body when she dances and how she can be in control of her life" and how that particular art form could represent any goal someone has. Moroder felt that the lyric "what a feeling" was right for the story but tried persuading them to incorporate the title of the film into the lyrics; the closest they could come to doing that was to use the two words that formed the title in separate lines of the song, such as, "In a flash it takes hold of my heart". It was only after the song was completed with the title "What a Feeling" that "Flashdance…" was added "to get some extra promotional mileage" out of it.
The song is in the key of B♭ Major and has a tempo of 122 beats per minute. Cara's voice spans from the tonal nodes of F3 to D5.

Recording

Moroder had produced Summer's hit "Heaven Knows", which featured Brooklyn Dreams vocalist Joe "Bean" Esposito, and had Esposito record a vocal demo of "Flashdance... What a Feeling". Moroder would have had Esposito do the final recording, but Paramount wanted somebody who was well known. The film's producers also felt the singer of the song should be female. Cara stipulated in her agreement to write the lyrics that she would be the one to sing the song, and Moroder thought "she did absolutely fantastic work." She wanted to do more than one take, and he felt her third crack at it was her best.
They completed recording the song in a few days, and the movie studio liked what they heard. On the Special Collector's Edition DVD release of Flashdance from 2010, Bruckheimer said, "When you first heard it, you said, 'Its a hit.' It’s one of those things you just heard, and you just couldn’t get it out of your head. And it just got us all so excited. We kept playing it over and over and never got tired of it. To this day, I’m not tired of that song. Cara also had a good feeling about it: "I knew when we were recording it that we had something special with the song. Some things you just feel, you know? You can’t really dissect it or analyze it. It’s a spiritual thing that you sense, and I did sense that I had something special with this song."

Critical reception

"Flashdance…What a Feeling" received predominantly positive reviews at the time of its release and has continued to do so. Billboard magazine proclaimed that the song was "the best showcase for Cara's vocal talents since she first came to 'Fame' three years ago. The spirited Giorgio Moroder tune has the same kind of yearning optimism as that initial hit." Cash Box concurred, "This should be the vehicle Cara has been searching for since her 'Fame' debut. Moroder's hook is powerful, the arrangement well sculpted. Strong stuff." Record Mirrors Betty Page predicted, "Huge hitsville, USA... Next year's Grammy, Oscar... winner, no doubt." Maureen Rice of Number One magazine admitted, "I really like this", and described it as "a perfect radio record". New York Times pop music critic John Rockwell wrote that the song, "sung by Irene Cara in a manner directly evocative of her big hit, 'Fame,' still possesses a buoyant energy of its own." The editors of Digital Audios Guide to Compact Discs described the song as "a blend of crooning synthesizer background music and a hard disco beat," and concluded, "These effects and Cara's enthusiastic voice make this an impressive song."
In their retrospective reviews, AllMusic labeled the song as one of their Album Picks from the Flashdance soundtrack, Cara's What a Feelin album, and the 1994 Casablanca Records Story compilation.

Release and commercial performance

Since Flashdance was to be released on April 15, 1983, Cara's recording was made available as a "scout" single in March as a way of getting the attention of the target audience for the film, but Paramount Pictures had doubts that the movie would do well at the box office. Bruckheimer explained that Casablanca's parent company, Polygram, "only shipped 60,000 , so they really had no faith in the record." The May 7 issue of Cashbox magazine, however, reported on the surprise success of the film, noting that by Tuesday, April 19, retailers were reporting that all Flashdance merchandise was gone. Paramount planned to have the film's director, Adrian Lyne, take parts of scenes from it to create music videos for songs from the soundtrack, including Cara's contribution, which would also be used in all subsequent radio and television ads for the film as a way for potential ticket buyers to "identify the motion picture".
In the April 2, 1983, issue of Billboard magazine, "Flashdance…What a Feeling" began a run of 25 weeks on the Hot 100, which included 14 weeks in the top 10, making it the longest-running top-10 single of 1983. The May 28 Billboard marked its first of 6 weeks as the most popular song in the US, and it also went to number one in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland and made the top five in Austria, Finland, Ireland, the UK, and West Germany. It debuted on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart in the April 30 issue and got as high as number 4 during its 24 weeks there. In the May 7 issue it made its first appearance on their list of the most popular Black Singles in the US and spent 5 of its 22 weeks there at number 2. The May 7 issue also began the 18 weeks that the 12-inch remix spent on their Dance/Disco Top 80 chart, 3 of which were in the top spot. On Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1983, it came in at number 3.
On June 17, the Recording Industry Association of America awarded the single Gold certification for achieving sales of one million copies, and on July 1, the British Phonographic Industry issued Silver certification to it for shipment of 250,000 units. Also on July 1, Music Canada awarded the single both Gold and Platinum awards for reaching the 50,000 and 100,000 thresholds for units shipped, respectively, and the Double Platinum award was issued on January 1, 1984, after reaching the 200,000 mark. Later that month, Billboard reported that sales in Japan were over 700,000. In France, sales have also reached the one million mark for Platinum certification.