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 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 $1.5 million settlement she was awarded by a Los Angeles Superior Court.

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.

[7] The demo was the music for what became "Flashdance... What a Feeling",[7] but Moroder did not agree to composing the score until after seeing a video of a rough cut of the film,[8] which completed shooting on December 30, 1982.

"[12] 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.

"[38] Record Mirror's Betty Page predicted, "Huge hitsville, USA... Next year's Grammy, Oscar... winner, no doubt.

[40] 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.

[45] Since Flashdance was to be released on April 15, 1983,[46] Cara's recording was made available as a "scout" single[47] in March[48] as a way of getting the attention of the target audience for the film,[49] but Paramount Pictures had doubts that the movie would do well at the box office.

[55] The May 28 Billboard marked its first of 6 weeks as the most popular song in the US,[23] and it also went to number one in Australia,[56] Canada,[57] Denmark,[58] Japan,[59] New Zealand,[60] Norway,[61] South Africa,[62] Spain,[63] Sweden,[64] and Switzerland[65] and made the top five in Austria,[66] Finland,[67] Ireland,[68] the UK,[69] and West Germany.

[71] 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 (behind "Juicy Fruit" by Mtume, which only reached #45 on the Hot 100).

"Flashdance... What a Feeling" is heard over the opening credits of the film as a young woman rides her bike through the streets of Pittsburgh just after sunrise and then continues as work goes on in a steel mill.

In his dissertation on film musicals about dance, John Trenz explained that the song functions as our way into the story since no other introductory information, such as the bicyclist's identity, is provided on the soundtrack.

As the chorus is heard for the last time to finish presenting the opening credits, the worker that the film keeps cutting back to is wearing a welding helmet with Alex printed on the front.

The welder removes the protective gear to reveal that Alex is female, and she shakes her hair loose from the helmet and catches her breath.

With the film's unveiling of its main character, Trenz wrote, "The gender revelation seems to punctuate the song's lyrics, 'What a feeling!

Alex is uncomfortable when her boyfriend Nick sees her dancing outside of her work setting, but her job performing onstage to contemporary music in a bar is a different kind of presentation where the audience means nothing to her.

[84] He averred that "she inhabits the song and reproduces an expression of her story by dancing to it and signifying the music and being the significance of its lyrics at the same time.

In contributing momentum to the audition performance, the tempo of "Flashdance... What a Feeling" combines with the editing and choreography of the scene in such a way to make it clear to the audience that Alex has earned her happy ending.

"[89] The politics of the film shift from the idea that a woman can thrive on her own to one in which she relies on a relationship to survive,[92] which, "echoed in the lyrics 'What a Feeling', secures her a place in a traditional, appropriately feminine, patriarchal system.

[100] As a single, "Flashdance…What a Feeling" earned Cara the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female,[101] and a nomination for Record of the Year.

[109] When Rolling Stone magazine ranked the 20 Greatest Best Song Oscar Performances in 2016, Cara's appearance at the 1984 Academy Awards was listed at number 20.

[119] The treatment she received in the entertainment industry from that point on, however, caused her to suspect that Coury initiated a smear campaign to ruin her career.

[122] She claims that they warned the other record labels of her lawsuit so that no one would sign her[123] and that people who once welcomed her—from producers and casting agents to the staff at restaurants and other favorite establishments around Los Angeles—now wanted nothing to do with her.

"[128] Because the statute of limitations had run out on claiming fraud, he had to focus on it as an accounting matter, but Cara would finally be able to make her case before a jury.

[128] In 1993, after concluding that Cara's career was damaged as a result of the treatment she received, a Los Angeles County Superior Court awarded her $1.5 million[129] for misaccounted funds.

[121] No case was allowed to be made for punitive damages, however,[121] and Nunziato explained how actually getting the money was more complicated: "Because only the corporations [Al Coury Inc. and Network Records] were sued back in the beginning and not the individuals, the corporations just declared bankruptcy; supposedly they used all the money to pay attorneys… Irene was vindicated by the jury, but the legal system kind of fell down, and there was no way to compensate her.