LAURA A. BRANIGAN, CLASSIC SONGS 'FOREVER YOUNG'

Laura Branigan

What have in common Jennifer Rush, Céline Dion, Umberto Tozzi and Alphaville? All of them are great singers with incredible hits and all of them have been versioned by one of the most popular voices of the 1980's and 1990's, Laura Branigan, the American singer who became famous for covering these artists with her own versions full of energy and passion.

The Grandma, who is a great consumer of Coke, always remembers the first time that she watched the spot Coke is it! where Laura Branigan sang the main song.

Laura Branigan died on a day like today in 2004. She was too young to die but she will be forever young. The Grandma thinks that the best way to pay homage to her is talking about her career and her life.

Laura Ann Branigan (July 3, 1952-August 26, 2004) was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Her signature song, the platinum-certified 1982 single Gloria, stayed on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for 36 weeks, then a record for a female artist, peaking at No. 2.

It also reached number one in Australia and Canada. In 1984, she reached number one in Canada and Germany with the U.S. No. 4 hit Self Control. She also had success in the United Kingdom with both Gloria and Self Control making the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart.

Seeing her greatest level of success in the 1980s, Branigan's other singles included the Top 10 hit Solitaire (1983), the U.S. AC chart number one How Am I Supposed to Live Without You (1983), the Australian No. 2 hit Ti amo (1984), and The Power of Love (1987). Her most successful album was 1984's platinum-selling Self Control.

More information: Laura Branigan Online

She also contributed songs to motion picture and television soundtracks, including the Grammy and Academy Award-winning Flashdance soundtrack (1983), and the Ghostbusters soundtrack (1984).

In 1985, she won the Tokyo Music Festival with the song The Lucky One. Her chart success began to wane as the decade closed and after her last two albums Laura Branigan (1990) and Over My Heart (1993) garnered little attention, she generally retired from public life for the rest of the 1990s.

She began returning to performing in the early 2000s, most notably appearing as Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical Love, Janis.

Laura Branigan

As she was recording new music and preparing a comeback to the music industry, she died at her home in August 2004 from a previously undiagnosed cerebral aneurysm.

In 2019, Gloria was adopted by the NHL's St. Louis Blues as their unofficial victory song, leading to the song entering ice hockey lore as an unlikely championship anthem. Branigan's legacy manager Kathy Golik embraced the trend and traveled to St. Louis to publicly represent Branigan among the Blues fanbase during the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, later stating her belief that Branigan and Gloria will forever be intertwined with the Blues and the city of St. Louis.

Laura Ann Branigan was born on July 3, 1952 in the New York City suburban village of Brewster, New York.

Branigan attended Byram Hills High School from 1966 to 1970, starring in the high school musical The Pajama Game in her senior year.

Between 1970 and 1972 she attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, and worked as a waitress.

In 1972 she met acoustic guitarist Walker Daniels and his future wife Sharon Storm, and acoustic guitarist Chris Van Cleave, forming the folk-rock band Meadow, named as a good place for Paul McCartney's band Wings to land in.

In 1973 the group, with bass player Bob Valdez, released their debut album The Friend Ship, featuring the singles When You Were Young, and Cane and Able, which featured the hook line Throw away your cane and you are able. The record was not properly promoted and never re-released. The band broke up, after which Walker Daniels committed suicide. Branigan preferred not to discuss her involvement with Meadow publicly.

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During the years after Meadow broke up, Branigan had various jobs, including a stint as one of Leonard Cohen's backup singers for his European tour in April–August 1976.

In December 1978 after meeting him at a party in Manhattan, New York City earlier in the year, Branigan married Larry Ross Kruteck (1936–1996), a lawyer, who died of colon cancer on June 15, 1996.

In 1979, after a chance meeting with manager Sid Bernstein on her return from Europe, Branigan was signed by Ahmet Ertegun to Atlantic Records. The strength and range of her voice actually impeded her career for several years while the label went through the process of categorizing her as a pop singer, and her 1981 single Looking Out for Number One, from her unreleased album Silver Dreams, made a brief appearance on the U.S. dance chart, reaching No. 60.

Laura Branigan

Two other early Atlantic singles, Tell Him and Fool's Affair, followed. None of these three singles or the B-side, When, were included on her first album, but all four songs were eventually released on CD over 30 years later in 2014 as bonus cuts on a U.S. CD reissue of Branigan's first album.

Branigan's 9-track debut album, Branigan, was released in March 1982. The first single from the album was All Night with Me, which reached No. 69 on the Billboard charts in early 1982.

The album alternated four energetic up-tempo songs with five ballads, including one of the few songs written solely by Branigan, I Wish We Could Be Alone.

Gloria, an Italian love song recorded in 1979 by Umberto Tozzi and successful in several European countries, was released as the album's second single.

Branigan's version was reworked with Tozzi's own arranger, Greg Mathieson, who updated its production with fellow producer Jack White to give it what Branigan called an American kick to match the new English lyrics. U.S. radio stations were initially unreceptive to Gloria but after it was embraced by dance clubs it eventually won them over, becoming one of the biggest hits of the 1980s. The album went gold, and the single was eventually certified platinum, sales of more than two million U.S. copies.

Branigan's performance of Gloria was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance alongside Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, Juice Newton and that year's winner, Melissa Manchester, becoming her only solo nomination.

In the spring of 1983 Branigan released her second album Branigan 2. Branigan's vocals propelled her English-language version of the French song Solitaire toward the top of the U.S. charts. The original Solitaire was written and recorded in 1981 by French singer-songwriter Martine Clemenceau.

More information: Gloria by Laura Branigan

Two songs included on the album began the careers for two then-unknowns: the English translation of Solitaire was the first major hit for songwriter Diane Warren, while the ballad How Am I Supposed to Live Without You was the first major hit for its co-writer, Michael Bolton. Branigan's version reached No. 12 on the hot 100 and spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart.

During the height of her career, Branigan also made acting appearances, first in 1981 in An American Girl in Berlin for West German television, and then after the success of Gloria, guest appearances on American television series such as CHiPs (Fox Trap, season 6, episode 16, in which she played Sarah, lead singer of the female rock band Cadillac Foxes), Automan and Knight Rider.

She would later appear in independent films including Mugsy's Girls, aka Delta Pi, 1985, with Academy Awards winner Ruth Gordon, and the Australian film Backstage. She sang on major national television and radio campaigns for products including Dr Pepper, Coca-Cola and Chrysler, which sponsored her 1985–1986 Hold Me tour.

Laura Branigan

The year 1984 was the height of the European synthpop era, and Self Control, the title track of Branigan's third album, released in April 1984 became her biggest hit internationally, topping the charts in over six countries, most notably West Germany, where it spent six weeks at No. 1.

The original version was recorded a few months earlier in 1984 by one of the song's co-writers Raffaele Riefoli under the name Raf held the West German number 2 spot during this time period; outside of Raf's native Italy, Branigan's version enjoyed more success, hitting No. 4 in the U.S. The song was featured on episode No. 8 of the first season of the TV series Miami Vice titled The Great McCarthy, which aired on November 16, 1984.

Other pop, disco, and adult contemporary hits from Branigan's Self Control album include The Lucky One, which won her a Tokyo Music Festival prize, the continental ballad Ti Amo, another Umberto Tozzi hit, and a No. 2 hit in Australia for Branigan, and the dance hit Satisfaction. The album also featured an understated version of Carole King's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow; as a counterpoint to all the dance productions, it was a bare-bones piano version.

In concerts and television appearances throughout her career, Branigan accompanied herself on the piano for the song.

In 1984 Branigan's live show was recorded twice, for a syndicated radio concert series and a concert video. Branigan was also nominated for an award at the American Music Awards of 1985 for favorite pop/rock female video artist, won by Cyndi Lauper. Also in 1985 Branigan performed the main theme song for the television mini-series Hollywood Wives, based on the novel by Jackie Collins.

More information: Forever Young by Laura Branigan

By the time Branigan's fourth album Hold Me was released in July 1985, Self Control was a worldwide success. The hits continued with Spanish Eddie, which was her sixth U.S. Billboard top 40 pop hit in two and a half years.

The subsequent single release Hold Me was a U.S. top-40 dance hit, and Branigan's introduction of the rock ballad I Found Someone, co-written by Michael Bolton, a later hit for Cher, scored even higher on the adult contemporary chart. However, neither song was supported by a music video, and both stalled at the low end of the Hot 100 chart.

On June 13, 1985, Branigan made her fourth appearance on legendary TV music show American Bandstand, performing Spanish Eddie and Hold Me. On July 4, 1985 she performed in Point State Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Laura Branigan

Branigan's fifth album Touch, released July 7, 1987, marked a change in her career. 

Under new management and using different producers, Branigan took a more active role in her work and in the studio, seeing her return to dance floors with the Stock-Aitken-Waterman-produced track Shattered Glass written by Bob Mitchell and Steve Coe, of the band Monsoon.

Shattered Glass was performed by Branigan on the last episode of American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark, to be broadcast on ABC on September 5, 1987, becoming their last guest performer.

The album also included a return to the Billboard top-40 with her cover of Jennifer Rush's Power of Love, which was one of the 20 bestselling singles in the U.S. during the Christmas season.

The album's third single Cry Wolf, a top-30 AC hit, did not capture the attention of pop radio stations and stalled; the ballad was recorded two years later by Stevie Nicks, and more recently by its writer Jude Johnstone.

Branigan's sixth album, Laura Branigan (March 21, 1990), brought her back to the Hi-NRG charts and gay clubs with Moonlight on Water, and she scored a top-30 adult contemporary hit with Never in a Million Years.

Branigan added production to her list of credits with her cover of Vicki Sue Robinson's disco-era Turn the Beat Around and the atmospheric Let Me In, a cover of an Eddie Money song. The album also includes Unison, which was the title track for Céline Dion's English debut CD in the same year.

More information: The Power of Love by Laura Branigan

The album's closing track, a cover of Bryan Adams' The Best Was Yet to Come, was produced and arranged by Branigan.

The 1990–1991 Laura Branigan Tour, which was kicked off with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on July 13, 1990 was followed by a performance in the Trump Regency Showroom in Atlantic City, New Jersey on July 14, and filmed for a syndicated U.S. television show SRO in Concert, which was released on videocassette and laserdisc; on July 15, 1990 she performed at the Warwick Musical Theatre in Rhode Island.

On Branigan's seventh and final studio album Over My Heart (August 17, 1993), the singer again produced, with Phil Ramone, and wrote and arranged. It included Didn't We Almost Win It All by Branigan and Brian BecVar, released as the first single, a cover of Cher's song Hard Enough Getting Over You, released as the second single, a cover of the Patty Loveless single How Can I Help You Say Goodbye, a cover of Roxette's song The Sweet Hello, the Sad Goodbye, and Is There Anybody Here But Me?, a smooth mid-tempo number.

Laura Branigan

After 1990 Branigan's chart success cooled in the U.S., though she was still in demand around the world and went on several global tours.

In 1994, not long after the release of Over My Heart, Larry Kruteck, Branigan's husband was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Branigan refused to accept the medical prognosis, and left the music industry to devote her attention to him.

Branigan put Kruteck on herbal treatments, eventually nursing him full-time. Kruteck survived for another two and a half years and died on June 15, 1996, in New York.

In early 2001, Branigan's return to the stage was postponed, when she broke both of her femurs in a 10-foot fall from a ladder while she was hanging wisteria outside her three-bedroom lakeside home in Westchester County, New York, resulting in physical therapy for six months.

In 2002, she performed twice as the singing Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical Love, Janis, before dropping out of the show. I left Janis because the producers failed to file with Equity properly, she told the Sunday News in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I was sort of relieved. My voice isn't anything like Janis Joplin's, and there were 19 of her songs in the show.

In later years she continued to record, and dated the drummer in her band Tommy Bayiokos.

More information: Self Control by Laura Branigan

Also in 2002, her second official US hits collection, The Essentials, was released, including the long out-of-print hit I Found Someone.

Laura Branigan died in her sleep at her lodge in East Quogue, New York, on August 26, 2004, at age 52. The cause was attributed to a previously undiagnosed ventricular brain aneurysm. It was reported in the media that she had been experiencing headaches for several weeks before her death, but did not seek medical attention. Her ashes were scattered over Long Island Sound.

The NHL's St. Louis Blues began using Laura Branigan's cover version of Gloria as its unofficial victory song when they went on a franchise-record 11-game winning streak during the 2018–19 season. A few Blues players visited a bar in South Philadelphia called Jacks NYB to watch the NFL Wild Card game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Chicago Bears.

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When you're on stage,

the audience becomes your other half.

It's the ultimate high you can reach

as a musician -an incredible feeling.

And no matter where I am it's still the same;

there's a reason we call music the universal language.

Laura Branigan