Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive” has been recorded and replayed for decades. It started as a disco hit in 1978 and became a kind of universal anthem for getting back up after you've been punched in the face by life, love, AIDs, etc. It won the first and only Grammy ever given for “Best Disco Recording.” The award category vanished the next year, but the song stayed.

Then Cake covered th e song in 1996 on Fashion Nugget.

They removed the shine. No big vocals. No disco beat. Just a flat, steady voice, a muted trumpet, and a sense of someone talking themselves into standing firm. It’s rough, tough, and feels like it should be on the soundtrack of the original Rocky movie. So one classic song, two versions, two moods—same core message:

You tried to break me. You didn’t. I am still standing!

While I love Gloria Gaynor’s original disco anthem, this cover by Cake was the first time the song held real, deep personal meaning for me.

It was in 1997 that I found myself in a suite at the Sydney ANA Hotel, pacing the room and looking out at the Harbour Bridge, trying to understand how my second tech acquisition had gone off the rails after the first one had seemed so easy and successful. We needed to buy this company. They knew it. They’d represented us in Australia for years, knew our customers, knew our market. They also knew how to extract more from the deal. They knew weak spots we didn't even know we had. We made a fair offer based on prevailing valuation norms. They countered with an inflated price and a separate request for personal kickbacks to be deposited into offshore bank accounts. If we refused, they threatened to damage our brand in Australia and take us to court.

This was quickly not turning into the deal-making experience I’d envisioned—having just completed the second-largest software company acquisition in Japanese history, and thinking of myself as quite the talented dealmaker. But here I was, with expectations that I would close this deal quickly in the air, and I really didn't know what I didn't know. I was out of my depth in a country and culture I knew very little about.

So I paced the room for the entire afternoon and let that Cake cover song run on repeat at max volume. No big moment of inspiration. Just a steady push toward a simple choice: fold my hand, get on a plane and leave, or stand my ground and fight.

I chose to stand and fight.

I ended up living out of a hotel suite for three months. That meant having an excess of time to overthink things and have recurring bouts of self-doubt. I also became initiated into a world of lawyers and courtrooms. Barristers in white wigs and tweed suits waltzing down the hallways of modern skyscrapers. Court judges in even more elaborate powdery wigs and long flowing black gowns, speaking like people from a Harry Potter movie. A post-colonial system that looked centuries old but ran with surprising precision. The formality of it all had a calming effect. Oddly, it made the problem feel manageable. I started to learn the lay of the land.

Somewhere in those weeks, something settled in me—conviction, resolve, a basic form of Stoicism I didn’t yet have a name for.

Hold your line. Stay steady. Trust your core principles, tune out the noise and pressure.

In the end, we won. We bought the company at a fair price. A year later, revenue was ten times higher.

And even now, when I hear Cake’s lead singer, John McCrea's dry voice, “I will survive,” I go back to that room in Sydney. Young. Nervous. Pacing. Searching for courage.

In the end, I think I learned that survival is often a quiet decision—not dramatic, not loud—just refusing to give in when it would be so much easier to do so. Those who survive keep putting one foot in front of the other. They keep on keeping on. They are quietly and consistently relentless.

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