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.

Unlike Tozzi’s original version, Branigan directly addresses Gloria, who’s all messed up over some guy.

Tozzi’s version of “Gloria” was very popular, especially in Europe. But Branigan’s 1982 single sold over two million copies in the United States alone. And her version features on pretty much every 80s pop compilation there is.

Umberto Tozzi

Tozzi was born in 1952 in Turin. At 16, he joined Off Sound, a group that performed in small venues around Turin.

In Milan Tozzi met Adriano Pappalardo and the two formed a 13-piece band and began a large-scale Italian tour.

Then, in 1974, Tozzi experienced his first songwriting success. The song was the ballad “Un corpo, un’anima” (“One Body, One Soul”), co-written with Damiano Dattoli and performed by Wess and Dori Ghezzi.