"I'm Still Here" by Shirley MacLaine

For anyone else, posting their performance of I'm Still Here would have a definite shelf-life... In the case of Shirley MacLaine, however, even after she shuffles off this mortal coil you just know she'll be shuffling into a new one soon enough, making this probably the best match of singer to song in the history of popular music. Given her penchant for reincarnation, they could just as easily call the song I'll Always Be Here.

Anyway, this is the vintage of Shirley MacLaine that's sharpest in my mind, probably because it was the same year Postcards from the Edge was released - 1990 - that I was privileged to attend a concert she gave at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre, in which she sang and danced the Hell out of that fancy-schmancy place; to add thrill to the memory, it was also one of my first assignments ever as an entertainment writer, for the now-defunct Angles newspaper, and easily the classiest to date.

The song, of course, originally appeared in Stephen Sondheim's 1971 musical, Follies, sung by Yvonne De Carlo; it's been somewhat rewritten here to reflect the life of MacLaine's character, Doris Mann, but the verve is all Miss MacLaine's. The Pop Culture Institute is proud to wish her a Happy Birthday and looks forward to doing so in perpetuity...
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