Released on November 2, 1983, this album is a continuation of the work that Cara began with producer Giorgio Moroder on the soundtrack to the 1983 film Flashdance.

The dance-pop song she co-wrote with Moroder and Keith Forsey for the film, "Flashdance... What a Feeling", went to number one on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 and foreshadowed the style of this album, which was unlike her R&B-heavy debut.

The title of the album clued in record buyers to the inclusion of the soundtrack hit from the spring of that year, but another four songs would make the Hot 100, the first of which, "Why Me?

The other two Hot 100 entries were Cara's last top ten hit, "Breakdance", and the one track on the album for which she did write the music, "You Were Made for Me".

It would be eight years before the courts would acknowledge the harm she suffered and she would begin receiving royalties for the recordings she had made since signing with the label.

In March 1983,[2] Casablanca Records released the first single from the soundtrack to the upcoming Paramount Pictures film Flashdance, the story of a young woman who works as a welder and nightclub performer and dreams of becoming a ballerina.

[6] D.C. Cab told the story of a taxi service in the nation's capital, and one of the cabbies was played by Mr. T., whose new television show The A-Team was a top ten hit in the Nielsen ratings.

[6] The release of the soundtrack album was also now moved up to December,[8] but the loss of those four months that had been available for publicizing the film disrupted the plans that the studio had to market it using members of the cast.

[6] One of the film's executive producers, Jon Peters, then arranged to have What a Feelin' pulled from store shelves and reissued to include "The Dream".

"[11] The album also spent 30 weeks on the magazine's Black LPs chart, where it made its highest showing at number 45 in the January 7 issue.

juggles two plot lines: her frustration as a performer going to auditions at Broadway theaters and finally having success while at the same time ending one relationship and finding another.

At the time of the album's release, Billboard Dance Trax columnist Brian Chin described it as "a well-executed piece of work on the part of both producer and artist" and made mention of the yet-to-be-released singles "Breakdance" and "The Dream (Hold On to Your Dream)" as "ace uptempo picks" that "beg for remixes.

"[24] He added, "Cara should also please fans nostalgic for the robotic early [Donna] Summer sound with her slightly off, trance-like delivery of 'Romance '83' and 'Cue Me Up.

"[25] In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, music critic Robert Christgau gave the album a "C+" grade but confused Cara's educational background with that of her Fame character, Coco Hernandez: "I wish she'd gotten her training in church rather than at Performing Arts.

"[21] In a retrospective review, AllMusic's William Ruhlmann gave it four-and-a-half out of five stars and said that, even though she sang and co-wrote the lyrics, Cara was mostly "the mouthpiece of Euro-disco producer Giorgio Moroder on these recordings.

"Unfortunately, I was going through a lot of hassles with my record company… So on the outside, I was putting on a face of being on top of the world and being a success, and on the inside I was trying to figure out how to sue my label.

[30] "Rumors swirled mercilessly about rampant drug use, spreading the notion that, in her early twenties, this great talent already had been hollowed out.

[31] A Los Angeles County Superior Court awarded her $1.5 million in 1993 after concluding that her career was damaged as a result of the treatment she received,[32] but her attorney, Tom 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.

[26] Unidisc Music reissued What a Feelin' on compact disc in 1997 in an expanded edition that included dance remixes of "Flashdance... What a Feeling", "Why Me?