A singer from the 1980s, who of course sang Gloria and Ti Amo and The Power of Love (the Jennifer Rush one). Her albums have been: and an awful lot of "best of" albums I don't think need mentioning.

A fair bit of it is fairly bland schmaltz or annoying disco, redeemed only by her tremendously powerful voice, and her ability to sustain emotional peaks. "Ti Amo" is a great song, of course, and that's the highlight of Self Control. On Hold Me there's a wonderful ballad called "Forever Young". (Many years later I discovered that someone else had done a song with the same name... apparently not the same one. This is better.) (I've just checked that node: she does the Alphaville one, not the Bob Dylan one.)

But the real stunner is Touch. This has got twelve tracks and only one of them is crap. Many of them are surging, soulful, intense, and really moving... ahem... well I think they are. Apart from "The Power of Love", there's

Branigan was born on 3 July 1957 in Brewster, in New York state, and began her career as a backing vocalist to... to Leonard Cohen?, touring Europe. She signed solo with Atlantic Records in 1982, and retired from the stage in 1996 after the death of her husband Lawrence Kruteck. She returned to the stage in 2001; in 2002 she starred in the musical Love, Janis as Janis Joplin. She died of a brain aneurysm on 26 August 2004.

So there goes my last chance of snugglebunnies with her, and I know it was always as close to zero as made no real practical difference, but I don't care.

Official website: http://www.laurabraniganonline.com/indexfs.htm

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