I was listening to the radio earlier today and I heard the song “Gloria” by Laura Branigan. At that moment, it hit me that both Van Morrison and U2 have songs with the same name.
Van Morrison – The Irish singer-songwriter is probably most well-known for his songs “Moondance”, “Brown-Eyed Girl”, “Domino” and – one of my all-time fave’s – “Into The Mystic”. In concert he does a rip-roaring version of “Gloria”, a song he wrote while he was with the band ‘Them’. I’ve seen several of his live performances on video or DVD and he makes the song last between 15 and 20 minutes ad-libbing the words but always coming back to the spelling of her name, in which the audience joins in: G-L-O-R-I-A, Gloria…
Laura Branigan – When Laura went looking for her ‘Gloria’, she reached global proportions. Her version was written by Umberto Tozzi (an Italian) in 1979 and re-worked for American audiences in 1982. Her ‘Gloria’ seemed somehow flawed, with ‘voices in her head’ and ‘if everybody wants you/why isn’t anybody calling’. She would later record “Self Control” and, even later still, would die of a brain aneurysm in 2004. I vaguely remember being shocked that she had died, thinking she was too young. That’s the good thing about music, it lives on.
U2 – With religious overtones, U2 sang about “Gloria In Excelsis Deo” (translated: Glory To God In The Highest). I’m not sure what they were trying to accomplish with this song because it was never one of their more popular tunes. I always thought it was a good tune and it got a lot of airplay when MTV was first starting out. For a year or two after it came out, the band used it as an opening number on their concert tours but by the time I saw them in 1987 in support of their “Joshua Tree” album, it was not even a part of their set.
Van Morrison – The Irish singer-songwriter is probably most well-known for his songs “Moondance”, “Brown-Eyed Girl”, “Domino” and – one of my all-time fave’s – “Into The Mystic”. In concert he does a rip-roaring version of “Gloria”, a song he wrote while he was with the band ‘Them’. I’ve seen several of his live performances on video or DVD and he makes the song last between 15 and 20 minutes ad-libbing the words but always coming back to the spelling of her name, in which the audience joins in: G-L-O-R-I-A, Gloria…
Laura Branigan – When Laura went looking for her ‘Gloria’, she reached global proportions. Her version was written by Umberto Tozzi (an Italian) in 1979 and re-worked for American audiences in 1982. Her ‘Gloria’ seemed somehow flawed, with ‘voices in her head’ and ‘if everybody wants you/why isn’t anybody calling’. She would later record “Self Control” and, even later still, would die of a brain aneurysm in 2004. I vaguely remember being shocked that she had died, thinking she was too young. That’s the good thing about music, it lives on.
U2 – With religious overtones, U2 sang about “Gloria In Excelsis Deo” (translated: Glory To God In The Highest). I’m not sure what they were trying to accomplish with this song because it was never one of their more popular tunes. I always thought it was a good tune and it got a lot of airplay when MTV was first starting out. For a year or two after it came out, the band used it as an opening number on their concert tours but by the time I saw them in 1987 in support of their “Joshua Tree” album, it was not even a part of their set.