Giorgio Moroder And Others Talk Donna Summer & Giorgio’s 10 Big Music Moments: Interview

Robbie Daw | May 17, 2013 9:05 am

7. “Flashdance… What A Feeling” by Irene Cara (1983) Was director Adrian Lyne‘s Flashdance truly a movie-musical, or simply a collection of music videos strewn together to loosely create a narrative about 19-year-old Pittsburgh steel mill worker/exotic dancer Alex Owens and her quest for credibility in the ballet world?

Audience-goers weren’t bothered with such particulars in 1983. They were happy to just kick back in the theater and be dazzled by the new MTV-style visuals playing out on the screen. Giorgio Moroder produced the hit soundtrack, which was buoyed by Irene Cara’s synth-heavy summer smash, “Flashdance… What A Feeling.”

“The choice of using Irene Cara came to me and [movie producer] Jerry Bruckheimer very easy,” Moroder says. “Irene has such a great voice and she did such a good vocal on the song ‘Fame’. Plus, the lyrics she and Keith Forsey wrote contributed very much to the success of the song.”

True enough, Moroder, Cara and Forsey snagged the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Flashdance… What A Feeling,” a pop classic that spent six weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.