Do or Die (Grace Jones song)
song by Grace Jones
"Do or Die" is a single by Grace Jones, released in 1978, promoting her album Fame.
Background
"Do or Die" was the first and in most parts of the world the only single release from Jones' Fame, her second disco album. On Fame it made up the first part of the A-side non-stop medley "Do or Die"/"Pride"/"Fame". The 7" single featured a heavily edited version (3:22) with the French-language non-album track "Comme un oiseau qui s'envole" as the B-side, included as a bonus track on the Canadian edition of the Fame album. The 12" single featured a slightly shorter mix of the album version with a cold end, and the B-side an extended mix of "Comme un oiseau qui s'envole". "Do or Die" reached number 3 on the US Billboard dance chart.
In 1985 the 7" edit of "Do or Die" was included as one of three disco tracks on the career retrospective Island Life, the other being the album versions of "I Need a Man" and "La Vie en rose" (1977).
Music video
A music video was shot as a part of an Italian TV show Stryx, for which Jones made several more clips. It uses the Stryx studio set and sees Jones dancing with a surreal scenography in the background.
Reception
Billboard magazine commented "this is mainstream disco featuring the distinctive vocals of the reigning queen of disco.
“Do or Die (Grace Jones song)” enters the record as song by Grace Jones. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Grace, Jones and song can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Do or Die (Grace Jones song)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Grace, Jones and song provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5286415. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1985 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Do or Die (Grace Jones song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.