This unique-voiced vixen had a string of hits in the early 80's ( "Gloria", "Solitaire", "Self Control", "Ti Amo"), and then seemed to disappear off the face of the planet. Does anyone know what she's been up to these days?

I've always loved Laura's magnificent voice. I have her Greatest Hits on CD. I know that she still records music and remains popular in Europe and Japan, where she often tours. She has also done some acting over the years, making cameo appearances in movies and television shows.


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I really liked Gloria and Self Control. She had a very unique voice. I still see her CD's through Japanese retailers, so she must fo well in the Far East, as already mentioned.

Thanks for the update on Laura Brannigan, guys. I'll have to try and track down some of the Japanese cd's and give 'em a listen. :thumb:

Let me know if you need any help getting them, Trixter. I can PM you a link next time I see them around. Even though Japanese CD's costs a fortune, you always get good value for money.

Here's the latest news on Laura Branigan.
Read the Article
HERE (http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/05/01/watn.branigan/index.html)


WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Laura Branigan is facing the music

Emerging from years of grief, '80s diva Laura Branigan finds her voice again

May 1, 2002 Posted: 4:21 PM EDT (2021 GMT)

"I'm in this to touch people," says Branigan (at her lakeside home in New York). *
(PEOPLE) -- In the 1982 music video for her hit song "Gloria," Laura Branigan grooves awkwardly in a studio, a single disco ball spinning above her head. "I have on black spandex pants and knee-high boots," says the singer. "It's hysterical."

But while she pleads guilty to a litany of fashion offenses in the 1980s, Branigan still takes pride in the "killer song" that stayed in the Billboard Top 40 for 36 weeks and went platinum. Even now, "I have to end every show with 'Gloria,' " she says. "The whole room is just screaming."

Recently that's a sound she has rarely heard. After spending much of the '80s playing hits like "Self Control" and "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?" to packed stadiums around the globe, Branigan, now 44, quit the music business in 1994 when her husband, Larry Kruteck, was diagnosed with colon cancer. For two years she nursed him full-time until he died in 1996 at age 58.
*
"That's what I lived for," she says. "It was not even a choice." Paralyzing grief kept her away from a music career for years. But now Branigan is dipping her toe back into the pop scene with a dance remake of ABBA's "The Winner Takes It All," a single that Billboard Magazine editor Chuck Taylor calls a "satisfying high-energy thumper."
While the new single may not stir the same kind of fervor "Gloria" did, Branigan sees her comeback attempt as an emergence from years of mourning. As a 24-year-old in 1981, when she met Kruteck at a Manhattan party, Branigan was on the way up.

But Kruteck, a lawyer 20 years her senior, was "not at all threatened" by her career, she says. They married nine months later and, when she wasn't touring, hunkered down at their New York City apartment. "I'd cook. We'd rent movies," Branigan recalls. "We were just great friends."

Then, in 1994, doctors found a grapefruit-size tumor in Kruteck's colon. After surgery and chemotherapy, he was given two months to live -- a prognosis Branigan refused to accept. Branigan put him on herbal treatments; they began spending more time at a beach cottage in the Hamptons, and Kruteck survived for another two and a half years. Close friend Vicki DePasquale, 52, says, "A piece of her died with Larry."
Spent time alone

For the next five years Branigan did the occasional concert to supplement her royalty income but mostly spent time alone or with close friends, slowly coming to terms with her grief. "It's something you never really get over," she says, "but you put it in a place inside you and deal with it in the way you have to."

In early 2001 she finally went back to the studio. But a freak accident in June of that year -- she broke both femurs when she fell 10 feet from a ladder while hanging wisteria outside her three-bedroom lakeside home in Westchester County, New York -- landed her in physical therapy for six months. She still has rods and pins in both legs, but she's back in the studio, recording an album she hopes to release this summer -- and more confident of her talents than ever.
Growing up in Brewster, New York, "I was real shy," says Branigan, the fourth of five children. When her parents -- James, a mutual-funds broker (who died in 1984) and Kathleen, now retired -- separated, Branigan turned even more inward.

In her senior year she landed the lead in the high school musical. "For the first time," she says, "I felt I could really express myself." After graduating, she scored a gig as a backup singer for Leonard Cohen's 1977 European tour. A chance meeting with manager Sid Bernstein on her return led to her first recording contract.

The taste for grunge in the early '90s nearly derailed her career. But Branigan blames bad management for her decline in popularity. This time she's managing her own career and so far has dates booked through the summer. She's in no hurry, however, to date other men. For now at least, music is her elixir. "Everybody's been through love and pain in their lives," she says, "and that's what music is about."

This is great news! I hope she has some real success! Seeing as 80s music is pretty popular again, this is good timing.

Originally posted by Recker
This is great news! I hope she has some real success! Seeing as 80s music is pretty popular again, this is good timing.

I hear ya, Recker!
I thought it was grea news when I read this too.

I really like her voice, thats why i bought some of her records, but the thing that I never liked was that she mainly sang cover versions. Does anyone know if Spanish Eddie is a cover as well?

I have the remix to this song if anyone wants it....ITS GREAT!

By the way...if you didn't know.....
Tiffany has a new song out right now too....

Open My Eyes ...its a club mix.....its great ...<G>

Thought you should know... :)

Peace,
Catch

You all have to excuse me if this is already posted on this forum, but incase it is'nt I thought you should know:

After having a terrible headache for several weeks, Branigan died in her sleep, Friday ( 29.08.2004 ).

Her friends were worried about her, but she never went to see a doctor.

Branigan is most famous for the songs " Gloria " and " Self Control "

The song " Gloria " went straight to the hitlist and stayed there for 36 weeks in 1982.

She also wrote the superhit " How Can I Live Without You " with Michael Bolton. She did backing vocals for Lenard Cohen aswell.

Many of her songs were used in a lot of 8o's fils, such as " Flashdance " and " Ghostbusters ".

http://www.vg.no/bilder/bildarkiv/1093779186.18415.jpg

"Self Control" remains my ultimate favourite 80s song.

I love 80s music, it shaped my life, I think, lol

Wow, I thought this was a joke, but she really passed away, I'm just so sad, I really loved her music, I guess her love for Larry was that deep, nowadays you lucky to find someone like that

May she rest in peace, she was my favorite, especially in those spandex

I think "Self Control will always be my favorite of her's. I had heard about her death shortly after it happened . I think someone mentioned having heard it on the radio, and told me. It's sad. She was very good, and had a very unique voice.

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 the Platinum-selling hit. 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 pop hits included "The Lucky One", "Spanish Eddie", and "Power of Love". She was of Irish and Italian ancestry. I heard no news at his time.

Bummer ... as I read through, I was glad to see she was singing again and looking forward to it. I hadn't heard about any of this. This is really neat to find out about past stars and such, just too bad she passed, I really liked her voice.

Yeah, she had an amazing voice and I con't understand why she didn't have a lot longer (more successful) career than what she did.

Yeah, she had an amazing voice and I con't understand why she didn't have a lot longer (more successful) career than what she did.

Yeah, it was strange Recks. I suspect that 'Gloria' didn't do her any favours, as that seemed to become a particularly unpopular anthem during the 80's backlash back in the 90's.

WHAT? Laura Brannigan Died?


Sorry, some habits die hard.

LMFAO!!! :laugh: I just HAD!! to come in here to see if you said that, Ron. :lol:

Yeah, she had an amazing voice and I con't understand why she didn't have a lot longer (more successful) career than what she did.
Id imagine that after having a number 2 single on the charts for a record number of weeks...she was set for life.

I was shocked to see the news of her death.