Laura Branigan
Laura Branigan |
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Laura Branigan (July 3, 1957 – August 26, 2004) was a popular American singer/actress from Brewster, New York, best known in the U.S. for the song "Gloria" (1982). She received the first of four Grammy Award nominations for that 1982 hit and the following year, Branigan introduced the ballad "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" (1983), which hit #1 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart. The same year, she had another Top-10 hit with "Solitaire". "Self Control" (1984) was her biggest-selling album, and the title track became an international smash. Her other Top-40 hits included "The Lucky One", "Spanish Eddie", and "The Power of Love". She was of Irish and Italian ancestry.
Biography
Rising success
Branigan studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and worked as a waitress while in school. She eventually got a job singing back-up vocals for Leonard Cohen, touring throughout Europe. In 1979 she was signed by Ahmet Ertegün to Atlantic Records, but the label was at first unsure how to categorize Branigan, given the singer's strong dramatic alto-voice with a four octave range.
She eventually recorded Branigan, the album containing "Gloria"; "Gloria" (originally recorded in Italian by Umberto Tozzi in 1979, and originally a hit only in Tozzi's native Italy) eventually became an international hit. American radio was not initially receptive to "Gloria"; the song's combination of American and European sound predated the imminent second "British Invasion" of popular music by several months. Embraced by dance clubs, especially gay clubs, it eventually won over American radio stations and propelled the song to become one of the biggest hits of the decade. The album went gold, as well as the single, and then platinum. Her vocal performance of "Gloria" was nominated for a Grammy award, her first of four nominations.
The 9-song debut album alternated 5 ballads with 4 hyper-energetic up-tempo songs, and included one of the few of Branigan's self-written songs "I Wish We Could Be Alone". Branigan's songwriting did not reappear on record until 1994.
Follow-up success
In the spring of 1983, Branigan released her second album, Branigan 2. By this time, the dramatic European synth-pop sound was on the rise, driving her performance of the English version of the French song "Solitaire" to the upper reaches of the charts. In addition to cementing a place in pop history and ensuring she was not a one-hit wonder, her second album's two big hits began the careers for two then-unknowns, who themselves became industry legends: The English translation of "Solitaire" was the first major hit for lyric writer Diane Warren, while the album's second hit single, the ballad "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?", was the first major hit for its cowriter, Michael Bolton. "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?" just missed the Top Ten on the Pop charts but spent three weeks at Number One on the Adult Contemporary airplay charts.
The year 1984 was the height of the European synth-pop era, but the striking production and sensuous, half-whispered vocals of "Self Control" (originally another Italian song, even if no Italian lyrics exist and had been already sung in English by Raf, another Italian singer-songwriter who started his career a few months earlier and now is one of the most successful singers in his country), the title track off Branigan's third album, took the world by storm. Like "Gloria", this was produced by German producer Jack White. The song became her biggest international hit, topping the charts in several countries and was an anthem on radio and dancefloors across the world, most notably West Germany, where it spent 7 weeks at number one. Other pop, dancefloor and adult contemporary hits off the album include the melodic electropop of "The Lucky One" (which won her a Tokyo Music Festival prize), the continental ballad "Ti Amo" (another Umberto Tozzi's Italian hit, and a #2 smash in Australia) and the club hit "Satisfaction." That year, her live show was recorded twice: once for a syndicated radio concert series, and a second time for a concert video.
The album also featured an uncharacteristically understated version of Carole King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" - as a counterpoint to all the disco production, this was a stripped-back piano version. Surprisingly, in the early 90's Branigan performed the song on an Australian TV talkshow, playing the piano herself, with remarkable dexterity and similarity to the studio version (played by someone else). Branigan's impressive piano skills were never utilised or credited on her recordings.
By the time of Branigan's fourth album, 1985's Hold Me, "Self Control" had swept the world and territories that had not previously embraced her began to release her earlier material, from South America to the Middle East to the Pacific Islands. Lead single "Spanish Eddie" was her sixth top 40 hit in two and a half years, but failed to enter the top 20. Subsequent release "Hold Me" was a top 40 dance hit and her introduction of the rock ballad "I Found Someone" (cowritten by Michael Bolton) scored even higher on the AC chart, but neither song was supported by a music video and stalled in the lower reaches of the pop charts.
Touch, which was released in 1987, marked a change in Branigan's career. Under new management and using different producers, Branigan took a more active role in her work and in the studio. The Touch album also saw her return to dancefloors with the Stock/Aitken/Waterman-produced "Shattered Glass," one of her best Hi-NRG performances. The album also included a return to the top 40 with her cover of Jennifer Rush's "The Power Of Love," which closed out the year as one of the top 20 bestselling singles of the Christmas season. Branigan's high-impact version of the now widely-covered ballad, featured an extraordinary key-change in the final chorus (lifting the pitch and power of Branigan's voice even though she was already, seemingly, at the top of both). Her performance is more emotionally charged than even Celine Dion's later version, but might be viewed by some, as altering the focus of the song (lyrically it is a positive love song, but Branigan's vocal hints at heartache). The album's third single, "Cry Wolf," was considered the album's most organic production (featuring an orchestra, non-computerised drums, and emotive vocals) and while it did not capture attention at pop radio, it was a top 30 Adult-Contemporary hit. Written by Jude Johnstone, it was recorded two years later by Stevie Nicks.
Career in the 1990s
Branigan's 1990 self-titled album brought the singer back to the tops of the Hi-NRG charts and gay dancefloors with "Moonlight On Water" and scored another top 30 AC hit with "Never in a Million Years." Continuing her more active role in studio production, Branigan added producing 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". It also included "Unison," which was the title track for Celine Dion's English debut CD in the same year.
Branigan's seventh album, 1993's Over My Heart, was her most personal and eclectic album, seeing the singer again try a hand at producing, alongside the legendary Phil Ramone. The album's mature personal themes of transcendence over the loss of a loved one, the nature of commitment, and coming to terms with life after a significant relationship was a sadly ironic presaging of the turn of events her own life would take. Not long after the album's release, she largely left the music industry in 1994 to spend more time with her husband, Larry Kruteck, following his diagnosis of colon cancer. He died in 1996, and it was some years before Branigan was ready to fully return to the public sphere.
While later years showed Branigan's chart success cooling stateside, she was still in great demand around the world and went on several global tours. She remained especially popular in Australia, South Africa and Chile, where she began the first of several invitational performances in the coveted late-evening slot of the famed Viña Del Mar music festival, televised live before an audience of thousands from an open-air arena in the coastal resort city. Branigan had several official hits collections released in South America, Japan, Germany and South Africa (where, in that country alone, she had warranted three separate volumes of hits collections by 1999); her native United States was the last territory to get its own greatest hits collection. This collection was released in 1995, the 13-track The Best of Branigan. This collection included two new covers, the shimmering "Show Me Heaven" written by Maria McKee and the fun "Dim All the Lights," which was also released in several remixes.
The remainder of her career
In 2001, about to release remixes of her updated take on the 1980 ABBA hit, "The Winner Takes It All", as well as working on material for a new album, Branigan's bid to return to the stage was postponed when she broke both of her femurs in a fall from a ladder outside her Westchester County house. In 2002, she made a comeback as Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical Love, Janis, for which she won rave reviews. [citation needed] The same year, her second official stateside hits collection, The Essentials: Laura Branigan was for some a boon, with the inclusion of the long out-of-print "I Found Someone." Largely comprising similar tracks as her earlier collection, however, and with five of her seven studio albums now out of print, for many fans the definitive collection has yet to be released. In 2004, she enjoyed a final return to a Billboard top ten chart, for Dance Singles Sales, with a 20th anniversary re-recording of her own Italo disco smash, "Self Control."
Three of Branigan's hit singles later became even bigger hits for other famous singers: "I Found Someone" for Cher in 1987; "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?" for Michael Bolton in 1989; and "The Power of Love" for Celine Dion in 1994.
Receiving rave reviews [citation needed] for her live performances, Branigan's voice (her vocal coach, Carlo Menotti, also coached such legendary vocalists as Judy Garland, Tony Bennett, and Diana Ross) was surrounded on her albums by sharp, tight performances from some of the best studio musicians in the business. The likes of guitarists Steve Lukather (Toto), Dann Huff (Giant) and Michael Landau; keyboardists Greg Mathieson, Harold Faltermeyer, Michael Boddicker and Robbie Buchanan; bassists Nathan East and Dennis Belfield (Rufus); drummer Carlos Vega; percussionists Paulinho Da Costa and Lenny Castro; and background vocalists including The Waters Sisters (Maxine & Julia), James Ingram, and Richard Page & Stephen George (Mr. Mister) were all repeat guests. Early producers included Jack White, Mathieson, Buchanan and Faltermeyer. As her stature grew, she attracted Grammy-winning producers including Phil Ramone, Richard Perry and David Kershenbaum. Successful foreign artists sought to work with her, and she performed duets with Australian megastar John Farnham on the heels of his releasing the most successful Australian album to date, as well as Latin pop phenomenon Luis Miguel. She was also a favorite guest performer on several of the most popular talk and music shows of the day, with ultimately as much as a dozen appearances each on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Merv Griffin Show, Dick Clark's American Bandstand and Solid Gold.
The singer occasionally made acting appearances, first in 1981 in An American Girl in Berlin for German television, and then after the success of "Gloria," guest appearances on American television series such as CHiPs, Automan and Knight rider. She would later do independent films such as Mugsy's Girls (aka Delta Pi, 1985) with the venerable Ruth Gordon, and the Australian film Backstage (1988). She sang on major national television and radio campaigns for products including Dr Pepper, Coca-Cola and Chrysler, which sponsored her 1985-1986 tour.
Death
Her sudden death on August 26, 2004, at the age of 47 was attributed to a brain aneurysm, which was also how her father and her paternal grandfather had died. Branigan was cremated, and her ashes were distributed over Long Island Sound.
In 2005, a memorial for her friends and fans was held on the anniversary of her death near the Long Island home in which she was caring for her mother at the time of her death. Its success made it an annual event, with a second such gathering in 2006 as a celebration of her life and the legacy of her passionate vocal performances and the heartfelt connection she made with her fans, to whom, in several interviews and from the stage, she would refer as "my other half."
Controversies
In the early 1970s, Branigan was briefly a lead singer in a band named Meadow, cowriting and singing a few songs on the band's album The Friend Ship (released 1973). This was before Branigan toured with Leonard Cohen and by the 1980s she was reluctant to acknowledge she ever had any connection with the band Meadow or the 1973 album.
In 1984 MTV initially refused to air the music video for Branigan's "Self Control", which was directed by William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, and was one of the first music videos to have been directed by a major motion picture's director. After the record label provided an edited version, the network added this revised video to its rotation.
In 1998, an individual bought the domain name "laurabranigan.com" placing a website on that domain that claimed to be Ms. Branigan's official website. After several years, it became common knowledge among Branigan fans that the website at laurabranigan.com had no actual authorized connection to the singer herself. In November 2002, a new website was launched at LauraBraniganOnline.com, which Branigan openly cooperated with, culminating in her sanction of LauraBraniganOnline.com as her sole official website in January 2004. This was documented in open letters on the latter site and the singer stated plainly that she had no connection with laurabranigan.com or its owner.[1]
Discography
For more information on her discography, go to the Laura Branigan discography page.
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Hit singles
| Title | Year | US Pop Peak | US AC Peak | US Dance Peak | Cashbox | ARC Wkly Top 40 | UK Singles Chart | Irish Singles Chart | Canadian Singles Chart | Germany | Australian Singles Chart | Austria | France | Switzerland | Sweden | Dutch Top 40 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Looking Out For Number One | 1981 | 60 | |||||||||||||||
| "All Night With Me" | 1982 | 69 | |||||||||||||||
| "Gloria" | 1982 | 2 | 28 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | |||||||
| "Solitaire" | 1983 | 7 | 16 | 28 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 5 | |||||||||
| "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" | 1983 | 12 | 1 | ~ | 13 | 10 | 46 | ||||||||||
| "Self Control" | 1984 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 13 | 1 | 1 | 7 | |
| "The Lucky One" | 1984 | 20 | 13 | 10 | 22 | 16 | 56 | 29 | 33 | 48 | 27 | 21 | |||||
| "Ti Amo" | 1984 | 55 | 22 | ~ | 54 | 38 | 100 | 5 | 2 | ||||||||
| "Satisfaction" | 1985 | ~ | ~ | 24 | ~ | ~ | |||||||||||
| "Spanish Eddie" | 1985 | 40 | 29 | 26 | 37 | 32 | 87 | 34 | 36 | 24 | 8 | 11 | |||||
| "Hold Me" | 1985 | 82 | ~ | 39 | 79 | ||||||||||||
| "I Found Someone" | 1986 | 90 | 25 | ~ | 81 | ||||||||||||
| "Shattered Glass" | 1987 | 48 | 27 | 13 | 51 | - | 78 | 43 | 60 | 26 | |||||||
| "The Power of Love" | 1987 | 26 | 19 | ~ | 29 | 17 | |||||||||||
| "Cry Wolf" | 1988 | - | ~ | - | 98 | ||||||||||||
| "Moonlight On Water" | 1990 | 59 | ~ | 44 (NRG 4) | 58 | - | |||||||||||
| "Never In A Million Years" | 1990 | - | 22 | ~ | - | ||||||||||||
| "Dim All The Lights" | 1995 | - | - | 36 | - | ||||||||||||
| "Gloria 2004" | 2004 | - | - | - | - | ||||||||||||
| "Self Control 2004" | 2004 | ~ | ~ | 10 | ~ | ~ |
Figures are for Billboard charts unless otherwise noted
~ (Title unreleased in that format)
Filmography
Movies
| Title | Credit | Year Released |
|---|---|---|
| Flashdance | Soundtrack, songs, "Imagination," "Gloria" | 1983 |
| Ghostbusters | Soundtrack, song, "Hot Night" | 1984 |
| Body Rock | Soundtrack, song, "Sharpshooter" | 1984 |
| Mugsy's Girls | Actress, Monica | 1985 |
| Violets Are Blue | song, "One Day" | 1986 |
| Backstage | Actress, Kate Lawrence | 1988 |
| Coming to America | Soundtrack, songs, "Come Into My Life" [Duet with Joe Esposito], "Believe In Me" | 1988 |
| Salsa | Soundtrack, song, "Your Love" | 1988 |
Television
| Title | Credit | Year |
|---|---|---|
| CHiPs (NBC) | Series, song, "A Love Until The End Of Time" | 1982 |
| Saturday Night Live (NBC) | Series, musical guest | 1982 |
| CHiPs (NBC) | Series, actress, Sarah; songs, "Gloria," "Down Like A Rock" | 1983 |
| Love Is Forever (NBC) | Movie, title song, "Love Is Forever" | 1983 |
| A Solid Gold Christmas (Syndicated) | Special, performer, "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas"/"Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" | 1983 |
| Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve (ABC) | Special, performer, "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You" | 1983 |
| Automan (ABC) | Series, actress, Jessie Cole; songs, "Gloria," "Hot Night," "Satisfaction" | 1984 |
| Cover Story (USA Cable) | Celebrity bio series, 1 episode devoted to Laura interview, behind the scenes footage, videos | 1984 |
| A Solid Gold Christmas (Syndicated) | Special, performer, "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas"/"Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" | 1984 |
| Miami Vice | Series, Song, "Self Control" | 1984 |
| The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (NBC) | Series, Songs (performed live w/Doc Severinsen & The NBC Orchestra), "Self Control, Ti Amo" | 1985 |
| Hollywood Wives (ABC) | Miniseries, title song, "Hollywood Wives" | 1985 |
| Disney's Living Seas (ABC) | Special, on-camera performer/composer, song, "If I Were A River" | 1986 |
| Record Guide '88 (Syndicated) | Music series, 1 episode devoted to Laura interview, videos | 1988 |
| SRO: In Concert (Syndicated) | Hour-long concert series, 1 episode devoted to Laura live in Atlantic City | 1990 |
| Monsters (Syndicated) | Anthology series, actress, Amanda | 1991 |
| Baywatch (Syndicated) | Series, soundtrack; end credits song, "I Believe" | 1994 |
Other notable work
Theater
| Title | Credit | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Love, Janis (Off-Broadway, NYC) | Singer, Janis Joplin | 2002 |
Video games
| Title | Credit | Year Released |
|---|---|---|
| Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | Soundtrack, songs, "Self Control" | 2002 |
| Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories | Soundtrack, songs, "Gloria" | 2006 |
External links
- Articles needing cleanup from February 2007
- Cleanup tagged articles without a reason field from February 2007
- Wikipedia pages needing cleanup from February 2007
- American pop singers
- American dance musicians
- American female singers
- American actor-singers
- American film actors
- American television actors
- American stage actors
- Hi-NRG musicians
- American singers
- Irish-Americans
- Irish-American musicians
- Italian-American musicians
- People from Putnam County, New York
- 1957 births
- 2004 deaths