Laura Branigan

Laura Branigan, the US pop singer who delivered a throaty cover of the 1970's Italian song Gloria and turned it into a worldwide hit in 1982, died in her sleep last week She was 47. Her official Website listed the cause of death as a brain aneurysm.

Branigan was born July 3, 1957, and raised in Brewster, New York, where she attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan. During the late 1970s, she toured Europe as a backing vocalist for Canadian singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen. She signed as a solo artist with Atlantic Records in 1982.

After her run of success in the 1980s, her releases in the early 1990s attracted little attention. In 1994, she sang a duet with David Hasselhoff called I Believe for the soundtrack of the television show Baywatch. She released a 13-track Best of Branigan LP the next year.

After the death of her husband Lawrence Kruteck in 1996, Branigan stopped performing but returned to the stage in 2001. In 2002 she starred as Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical Love, Janis which earned her rave reviews.

Branigan has a strong following in Jamaica. She not only hit number one in Jamaica in 1982 with Gloria, but she had chart hits with Forever Young, Self Control, Ti-Amor, and Power of Love (which was made popular by Jennifer Rush).

Branigan co-wrote How Am I Supposed to Live Without You with Michael Bolton. Her original recording of that song reached number one on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart in 1983, but Bolton's version became a worldwide smash in 1989.

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