Gloria: Laura Branigan Song Hot Again, Fans Unaware She Died

Skip to content By Cicero Estrella | Bay Area News GroupPUBLISHED: February 22, 2019 at 3:21 PM PST | UPDATED: February 23, 2019 at 3:29 AM PSTGetting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The St. Louis Blues hockey team has adopted Laura Branigan’s song “Gloria” as their good-luck anthem. The club’s superstitious fans have taken to the 1982 hit as well, and a few have reached out to Branigan’s former representatives for her to perform the song live.

The problem: Branigan died 15 years ago.

“Absolutely LOVE this, and it’s getting a LOT of press!” Branigan’s former manager Kathy Keto Golik wrote on Facebook.

“Bittersweet part,” she added, “is that some of their fans and such are unaware of Laura’s passing and have been requesting that she come sing ‘Gloria’ at one of their games or the playoffs … so wish she were here for that, as I know she would be thrilled.”

People are requesting Laura Brannigan come play her 1982 hit "Gloria" live as it experiences a fun renaissance — but she died in 2004https://t.co/WRd8apKKRo

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 22, 2019

Branigan was 52 when she died of a brain aneurysm in her Long Island home in 2004. But it seems Blues fans aren’t the only ones who might have missed the news of her passing.

“One out of every two people do not know that she even passed (after) all these years,” Tommy Bayiokos, Branigan’s former boyfriend and drummer, told the Daily News.

Bayiokos, who is working on a screenplay about Branigan’s music career, says “Gloria” makes a comeback every few years. In 2017, for example, it picked up steam after it was used in the film “I, Tonya” about the 1994 figure skating scandal involving Tonya Harding.

The song is currently featured in the trailer for Julianne Moore’s upcoming film “Gloria Bell.”

The Blues, according to an NHL website story, glommed onto the song after a number of its players heard it repeatedly at a Philadelphia bar while watching the NFL Wild Card playoff game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys in January.

“We got together with some friends and watched the game with a bunch of Philly guys who grew up there,” Blues defenseman Joel Edmundson said. “They had a DJ in the bar and whenever there was a commercial break, they would crank the tunes and all these guys from Philly would get up and start dancing around. They played this song ‘Gloria’ a couple of times. … Everyone would get up and start singing and dancing.

“We just sat back and watched it happen. Right there we decided we should play the song after our wins. We won the next game, we got a shutout, so we just kept on playing it.”

“Gloria” replaced another oldie but goodie, “Runaround Sue,” as the Blues’ post-game victory song.

“Most of the time, when you try to figure out a song to play, it has something to do with the team or something that happened throughout the year,” Blues center Alex Steen explained. “We started with ‘Runaround Sue,’ which is a happy song. It’s like the feeling you get after wins in our building now (with ‘Runaround Sue’ playing). It was the same vibe with ‘Gloria’ — it’s an old school song and it puts the boys in a good mood.”

For Bayiokos, a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, it all adds up: “Makes perfect sense to me, a winning song, songstress and hockey team,” he said.

Branigan’s cover of “Gloria” — originally a 1979 hit for Italian artist Umberto Tozzi — was her biggest hit, reaching No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

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