''Born to Be Alive'' is the first studio album by

Patrick Hernandez Patrick Pierre Hernandez (born 6 April 1949) is a French singer who had a worldwide hit with " Born to Be Alive" in 1979. Biography Born to a Spanish father and an Italian mother in Le Blanc-Mesnil, Seine-Saint-Denis, Hernandez grew up in th ...

, released internationally in 1978 and in the US in 1979. It features the eponymous disco hit "

Born to Be Alive ''Born to Be Alive'' is the first studio album by Patrick Hernandez, released internationally in 1978 and in the US in 1979. It features the eponymous disco hit " Born to Be Alive" as well as a less-successful single, "Disco Queen". Background ...

" as well as a less-successful single, "Disco Queen".

Background

While a member of the French group

Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...

, Hernandez was signed by producer Jean Vanloo and left to Waterloo, Belgium to begin work on a solo album. In November, 1978, the album was released on the Aariana sub-label Aquarius Records (in France). The first single released from the album was "

". It found immediate success throughout Europe, and in January 1979, Hernandez received his first

gold record Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

from

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. Just starting her career as a dancer, Madonna toured parts of Europe with Hernandez. In early 1979, the album reached the US market with a release on the A-Tom-Mik label and later

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...

. The US release contained a remixed version of "Born to Be Alive" and found great success, peaking in the US ''Billboard''

Hot Dance Club Play Dance Club Songs is a chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine in the United States. It is a national look over of club disc jockeys to determine the most popular songs being played in nightclubs across the country. It was launched as th ...

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent ...

at #1 and on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 at #16. It sold over one million copies in the US.

Background

Track listing

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References