Think of Laura

Christopher Cross wrote this song about Laura Coffin Carter, an 18-year-old student at Denison University in Granville, Ohio who was killed by a stray bullet on April 17, 1982. She was riding in a car with her parents and three friends when gunfire broke out a block away and the bullet hit her in the chest. Cross was dating Paige McNinch, who was Laura's best friend and one of her sorority sisters. He wrote this song to honor Laura's memory: A friend of a friend, a friend to the end That's the kind of girl she was Taken away so young Taken away without a warning Think of Laura but laugh, don't cry I know she'd want it that way

Cross released this song on his second album, Another Page, in January 1983. Later that year, the song was used on the popular soap opera General Hospital as the love theme for the characters Luke and Laura, who were arguably the most well known of all daytime TV couples - their 1981 wedding was the highest-rated episode in American soap opera history. Its use on the show vaulted the song up the charts, and in February 1984 it reached #9 on the US Hot 100 and went to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, where it stayed for four weeks.

Boyz II Men recorded a new version of this song called "Think of Aaliyah (The Aaliyah Song)" in honor of the singer Aaliyah after she died in 2001. The song was never officially released, but appeared on various download sites and can be found on YouTube.