Video of the Day: Patti Smith Sings “You Light Up My Life” to Kids

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Patti Smith rates damn near the top of our list of heroes. We swooned over her graduation speech at Pratt last month. Now, Boing Boing has uncovered a much less polished, but equally charming vintage video of Smith on a show called Kids Are People Too in 1979. Asked about the punk movement, an endearingly blunt Smith tells the show’s host, “The whole thing of punk rock is, like, newspapers and media have blown it out of proportion. But the main thing of it is, rock ‘n roll is getting back in the hands of the people. It belongs to the kids again, not the big business guys.” She admits that she may just be the female Mick Jagger and tells an ecstatic girl that she wanted to be a missionary as a kid. And then, she sings a startlingly beautiful version of “You Light Up My Life,” dedicated to “1979, the year of the child.”