Umberto Tozzi’s Gloria

How an Italian pop song made Laura Branigan an 80s icon

Umberto Tozzi in concert during the Wiener Stadtfest in 2014 (Vienna, Austria). Photo: Manfred Werner. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

In the 1970s, Italian musicians Umberto Tozzi and Giancarlo Bigazzi wrote a love song called “Gloria”. The protagonist in the song yearns for a woman by the name of Gloria.

In 1979, Tozzi recorded the original version of “Gloria”. A few years later, New Yorker Laura Branigan recorded an English cover.