Patsy Gallant

With a voice strong, pure and sexy — and a clever way of delivering French lyrics in English, and visa versa — blonde disco bombshell Patsy Gallant made the '70s her own. Rediscover her timelessly joyous groove with the international 1976 hit "From New York to L.A.," two versions of "Sugar Daddy" that bridge the Franco-English divide, and a smouldering cover of David Essex's "Rock On," cunningly retitled "Raconte" for the francophone audience: the two titles sound almost identical. Gallant can sing it all, as our Next Steps will overwhelmingly confirm.

Patsy Gallant has such a fabulous set of pipes that no genre is beyond her talents — here we run the Gallant gamut, from swinging '60s pop nugget "La musique et la danse," through the slinky, punchy funk of "Blues en Dessous de Zero," the smooth Yuletide jazz stylings of "Nöel blanc" and the beautifully controlled balladry of "Les uns contre les autres." We even find her grinding majestically under a 21st-century glitter ball with the techno-centric "Disco queen d'un soir" (2002).

Blessed with a high note you could hang the moon on, Patsy Gallant became a global star. The product of a family fairground act (the Gallant Sisters) in New Brunswick, she would prove best suited for solo work and a move into commercial jingles, followed by variety — she bookended the '70s with her own TV shows — and it's no surprise that she ended up in musical theatre after the glory days of disco became a soft-focus memory. Even though Gallant took flack from some quarters for "borrowing" the melody from Quebecois anthem "Mon Pays" and transforming it into "From New York to L.A.," nobody can deny she nailed a dancefloor classic (and even cheekily recast the original in this mould). Here we re-live highlights from Gallant's glitterball nights and reveal the full extent of genre-spanning talents.