Tyler's biggest hit is a perfect encapsulation of what made her a star in the 1980s: An epic power ballad surging with emotion, delivered in
Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh singer behind bombastic 1980s hits including "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding Out For A Hero," has died. She was 75 years old. The news was shared on her website and official social media channels.
"Bonnie's family and team are heartbroken to announce that Bonnie unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for," the statement reads.
In May, Tyler was admitted to a hospital near her home in Faro, Portugal for emergency intestinal surgery. Following the procedure, her official website announced that she had been placed in an induced coma for recovery.
Born Gaynor Hopkins in Wales in 1951, she grew up in a working-class family and dropped out of school at age 16. She began singing in clubs under different stage names before officially landing on Bonnie Tyler when she signed to RCA Records in the 1970s. Tyler went on to release a string of pop-rock singles with moderate success in the latter part of the decade, including "Lost in France."
Tyler's musical signature soon became the heart-rending way she belted as though her life depended on it, pushing her voice to its limit in a way that captured the sheer desperation of anything she sang about, whether it was total heartbreak or faith in a knight in shining armor.
In 1976, the already raspy-toned singer underwent surgery to get nodules removed from her vocal cords. Tyler later claimed she did not properly follow recovery instructions, leading to a change in her voice.
"I wasn't supposed to speak after the operation," she told The Times in 2009. "I got very frustrated, and one day I screamed and the specialist said, 'You've really gone and done it now. You're going to be more husky.' When I went into the studio they all said, 'Bloody 'ell, where's that voice come from?'"
The coarser quality of her vocals would almost immediately boost her career and become a defining quality of her sound for years to come. One of her first singles post-op, "It's A Heartache," became an international breakout hit, climbing to No. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. But it wasn't until she signed to CBS and requested to work with composer and producer Jim Steinman that her career would really take off.
Steinman was known for his over-the-top style, coming from a background in musical theater that helped carry operatic rock from the 1970s into the maximalist pop of the following decade, and he was coming off the massive success of Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell, an album built from songs originally meant for a musical that was one of the biggest hits of the 1970s. Despite hesitation from Tyler's label, he agreed to meet with her and soon wrote what would become a landmark song for both of their careers: 1983's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," off Tyler's fifth studio album, Faster than the Speed of Night.
The seven-minute epic features a call and response between Tyler's murky lower register and Rory Dodd's clear falsetto, with Steinman's wall-of-sound production climbing to a histrionic chorus. The song's musical melodrama underlined the emotional anguish at its core, a story about two star-crossed lovers caught in the dark aftermath of a doomed romance. Shortened for radio play, the song became a massive success, topping charts around the world and earning Tyler her first Grammy nomination for best female pop vocal performance. Meat Loaf would later claim Steinman originally wrote it for him, something both the composer and Tyler denied.
"He told me he had started writing the song for a prospective musical version of Nosferatu years before, but never finished it," Tyler told The Guardian in 2023. "We shot the video in a frightening gothic former asylum in Surrey. The guard dogs wouldn't set foot in the rooms downstairs where they used to give people electric shock treatment."
The triumph — and drama — of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" gained attention from Paramount Pictures, who asked Tyler to contribute to the soundtrack for the 1984 film Footloose. Paired with Steinman and songwriter-screenwriter Dean Pitchford, she recorded "Holding Out For A Hero," a fiery pop anthem with rigorous keys, synths and drum machines that soar as the song progresses, seemingly racing against Tyler's pleas for a savior.
Despite its kitschy musical excess, bordering on '80s "cheese," the A.V. Club later wrote that the song works because Tyler sounds "like she's ripping herself apart… That sense of desperation contributes to the song's ultimate effect, a heart-pounding thrill that short circuits everything but the most primal urge to shout along, begging for a steed-riding uber mensch to drive his sword through the heart of loneliness and carry the listener away."
Although Steinman and Tyler did not continue their collaboration beyond that period of the 1980s, their work together came to be emblematic of the sound of the decade. Tyler continued recording and touring for the rest of her life, but it was "Total Eclipse of the Heart" that would keep riveting listeners for years, surging on the charts during major solar eclipses. The song's success may have overshadowed — or eclipsed — the remainder of Bonnie Tyler's professional achievements, but it's a fitting legacy for an artist with a penchant for songs that feel larger than life.
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