Taking Sides: Laura Branigan versus Ricky Martin versus Raf versus Infernal

[koganbot]

Laura Branigan

Watch on YouTube

Raf

Watch on YouTube

Ricky Martin

Watch on YouTube

Infernal

Watch on YouTube

Also, if you insist, here are Royal Gigolos (shitty rip), Soraya, Paffendorf, Dim Chris & Thomas Gold, Paralyzed Age, and Caramelle.

(Laura's is the one that touches me most: she's a klutzy stomper who overenunciates lyrics, but with a song this good it makes her charming, an everywoman in the vortex of the night. Raf (the original version, came out several months before the Branigan) is good bread-and-butter Italodisco, Ricky's version's got the most flair and flexibility but he's a bit too easy with it, Infernal are forceful though far too cold.)

Comments

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Woah, faulty memory alert...

1) So it was Chuck who made the Madonna/Curtis comparison (how swell of me to think it was me. I also wrote *Ulysses* FWIW.)

2) The DJ was a "friend of a friend"? I guess that's possible... the "friend" would've been an at-the-time girlfriend who previously went to school in Rochester, though I seriously don't recall her being friends with the DJ (maybe her friend who took us to the bar -- and still lived in Rochester?? -- was friends with the DJ. But if I was so impressed with him why don't I remember meeting him or saying hi?).

3) Odd how those "magnificent but untypical" rock songs (in '95) becomes "good but just kind of pleasant" (in '09).

The "wedding party" part does come back now, though.

[koganbot]

OK, word is in from ROB:

I think you have it backwards -- FIRST Scott, in a Radio On review of Natalie Cole's "Unforgettable" (her duet with the late Nat "King" Cole) said he looked forward to Madonna teaming up with Ian Curtis on "She's Lost Control." Then (next issue, ie a year later!) Chuck wrote that Laura Branigan had already done this with "Self Control." Both points are incredibly brilliant, and I can lay no honest claim to them, though I wish I could!

So, Scott, your original memory is correct.

[koganbot]

I mean, correct as to your own role, but it was Chuck not Rob who followed up on the desire for a Madonna-Ian duet by saying that the equivalent had already occurred on "Self Control."

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Er, yeah (though I have no idea if this is the proper place on this thread to "respond"), it was definitely me who formulated the "Self Control" = "She's Lost Control" equation (I'd actually forgotten that Madonna was ever part of it, to be honest.)

From my second book (which came out later than Radio On obviously):

[i]Flashdance's queen was Laura Branigan, a parttime actress from New York who scored five top-50 hits between mid-'82 and mid-84. Laura sang about hearing voices, and her own voice was hoarse and VERY BIG--even as operatic pop, "Gloria" went way overboard (and, in 1996, foperatic British popsters Pulp combined its melody with guitars from Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" and words about a woman friend who used to ignore the singer in high school, sort of like the mom and dad on my all-time favorite TV show *My So-Called Life*). In "Breaking Out," Laura's "caught in the trap of the workaday world," but breaking free at night; in "Self Control," basically Joy Division's "She's Lost Control" made more lurid, she lives "among the creatures of the night," pacing the streets of her soul. Her near-metal "Heart" comes from "The hour of nighttime when the demons come to call," when sleep is the only way out.[/i]

I have no idea how to make Italics on this board, by the way.

And *My So-Called Life* is no longer my all-time favorite TV show. (*Friday Night Lights* probably is.)

Also (assuming nobody has mentioned it), isn't "Gloria" actually a cover of an earlier European hit -- In Italian, I think, presumably by some Italian singer?

By the way, I hate to keep plugging this brilliant ILM thread that I started a few weeks ago that it both pisses me off and dumbfounds me that people keep criminally ignoring (should have boycotted this one because of that!), but I'm pretty sure a couple other Euro- proto-Branigans are mentioned on the thread below, notably German diva Helen Schneider (of Helen Schneider and the Kick Kraut-fame) and apparent 1975 Eurovision contestant Joy Flemming (whose video is embedded):

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=41&threadid=68741#msg337518

[koganbot]

Oh, now I'm upsetting everybody I can by not getting around to commenting on (a) Lily Allen downloads, (b) Tinchy Stryder embeds, and (c) now Euroschlagerpop. So "Ein Lied Eine Brucke Sein" is playing as I type, and the melody in the chorus is a hyped-up "Let It Be Me," though the verse is more the galumphing gallop I'd expect.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Turns out the 1978 Gene ("Duke of Earl") Chandler disco track "Lovequake" sounds a lot like Branigan's "Gloria," chorus-melody-wise, as well. Not sure if that's an accident.