"Gloria" has been song the last time

Laura Branigan, a Grammy-nominated pop singer whose 1982 platinum hit "Gloria" stayed atop the pop charts for a remarkable 36 weeks, has died. She was 47. Branigan died of a brain aneurysm Thursday in her sleep at her home in East Quogue, said her brother, Mark Branigan. He said she had complained to a friend of a headache for about two weeks before she died, but had not sought medical attention. Gloria," a signature song from her debut album "Branigan," earned her a Grammy nomination for best female pop vocalist, the first of four nominations in her career. The song "just went mega," said her former manager, Joan Di Tursi, of North Bergen, N.J. She sang it for audiences around the world, from Russia to China to Australia. Branigan also made television appearances, including guest spots on "CHiPs," and in the films "Mugsy's Girls" and "Backstage." She released seven albums after her debut "Branigan," including "Solitaire," "Self Control," and "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You," which was co-written with Michael Bolton. Her songs also appeared on soundtracks for the films "Flashdance" and "Ghostbusters." Branigan's body was found by a health care worker Friday morning, Di Tursi said. Friends and family had urged her to get medical attention for excruciating headaches that plagued her for several days last week, but she declined, informs Newsday. According to Telegraph, Laura Branigan, who died on Thursday aged 47, will be best remembered for her classic 1983 pop-disco anthem Gloria. By rights the song should not have been a hit. It was a reworking of an up-tempo Italian chart-topper of 1979, sung by Umberto Tozzi, which had been given decidedly obscure, somewhat paranoid English lyrics by Branigan: "Are the voices in your head calling Gloria?" Moreover, disco's moment had very much come and gone. Yet Gloria was redeemed by Branigan's powerful delivery, and it found an audience in clubgoers who were hungry for high-energy (or, in the parlance of the day, Hi-NRG) tunes. The song had that happy knack of lodging unbidden in the brain, and soon there were few teenagers who could not hum it. At the end of December 1982, it reached No 2 in the American charts, remaining in the Hot 100 for a further eight months. In Britain, it peaked at No 6 at the start of 1983. Laura Branigan spent much of the mid-1990s caring for her husband, Lawrence Kruteck, a lawyer 20 years her senior whom she had married in 1981 and who had subsequently developed cancer. His death in 1996 was a blow she struggled to overcome, and when, in 2001, she felt able to return to performing, she was halted by an accident in which she broke both legs after toppling from a ladder while dressing wisteria. Recently, however, she had been seen again on the stage and had received good notices for her portrayal of Janis Joplin in an off-Broadway musical, Love, Janis. She died in her sleep at her home at East Quogue, New York, from an aneurysm of the brain.