Gloria

(Bigazzi-Tozzi) – Umberto Tozzi – 1979

With its seamless counterpoint between voice and instrumental parts, the melody of Gloria quickly becomes an earworm impossible to forget. Among Tozzi and Giancarlo Bigazzi’s best collaborations, the song topped the Italian hit parade and immediately reached Europe, conquering Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland and Austria. Covers popped up as quickly: in German, sang by Lena Valaitis, in French performed by Sheila, and especially in English by Laura Branigan in 1982, which brought Gloria to the top spot in the United States the following year, also thanks to its inclusion during a sequence of the hugely successful film Flashdance in 1983. Loved by orchestras (with recordings by both Paul Mauriat and Frank Pourcel, and the symphonic version by the London Symphony Orchestra) Gloria has continued its triumphant journey up to recent times, in the performance in German by the Austrian group Der Grubertaler in 2015, and as the musical background to a scene of Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed movie The Wolf of Wall Street in 2013.