There’s this '80s R&B hit that I remember getting extensive airplay. I’m 99.999% certain that it was sung by a well-known female singer in the mold of Patti Austin, Patti LaBelle, Deneice Williams, etc.
In fact, I thought this song was by Patti Austin, but a perusal of her entry at allmusic.com turned nothing up.
The refrain contains, in part, the following lines:
I know garita,
I’m by myself
Googling those two lines got me nowhere, and I am unsure about the word “garita”. It could well be another similar-sounding word. I vaguely remember hearing – back when the song was new – that the song was about self-defense and female self-assurance, and that the word “garita” is a “street” pronunciation of “karate”.
Can anyone help? This song was a huge radio hit all over the U.S, and charted well on Billboard’s Top 40 … so the track is anything but an obscurity. I just can’t put enough of the pieces together to recall the artist and title.