Who Was Bonnie Tyler, 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' Singer, Who Died at 75?

Named Gaynor Hopkins, in Wales, Bonnie Tyler became one of the most commercially successful British artists of the 1970s and 1980s. Owner of a husky and powerful voice, she transformed her striking timbre into her main signature and built a career based on dramatic ballads and grandiose productions that mixed rock, pop and country influences.

The daughter of a coal miner, she was born and raised in social housing in Skewen, south Wales, about seven miles from Swansea. The family home had an outside bathroom, and she shared her childhood with three sisters and two brothers.

From an early age, he demonstrated a passion for music. He was a fan of the Beatles and his first album was A Hard Day's Night. At the age of 13, he bought his first single, "Hippy Hippy Shake", by the band Swinging Blue Jeans. He also religiously followed the music program Top of the Pops, as reported in his autobiography Straight From the Heart. She would record performances on a two-track reel-to-reel recorder for replay and hand-write lyrics to her favorite songs by artists such as Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.

Before his fame, Tyler sang in local bands. In 1976, he had to undergo surgery to remove nodules on his vocal cords. During his recovery, he disregarded the doctor's recommendation to rest and returned to singing prematurely. The effort permanently altered his voice, giving rise to the hoarse timbre that would later become his trademark.

At the time, she performed under the name Sherene Davis and was the lead singer of a soul band. She was discovered by talent scout Roger Bell, who took her to London to record demos. After a period of searching for a record label, she signed a contract with RCA, who also suggested adopting the stage name Bonnie Tyler.

His debut album, The World Starts Tonight (1977), brought him his first commercial success, "Lost in France", and earned him a nomination in the new artist category at the Brit Awards. The following year, he reached third place in the British charts with "It's a Heartache", consolidating his name internationally.

After a period of less prominence, Tyler signed with Sony and sought to reinvent his career. When she watched a performance of Meat Loaf playing Bat Out of Hell on the BBC, she was impressed by the grand style of Jim Steinman's compositions. Deciding to work with him, she asked the composer and producer for an opportunity, a partnership that would give rise, years later, to the greatest success of her career.

'Total Eclipse of the Heart'

Steinman introduced her to his song "Total Eclipse of the Heart", which would become the debut single from her fifth studio album, "Faster Than the Speed ??of Night". He borrowed one of the lines from the song "Turn around, bright eyes" from his 1969 musical, "The Dream Engine," written while he was a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts. The composer told her that the song was from a possible musical version of "Nosferatu".

Featuring Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums, members of the E Street Band, "Total Eclipse" is a reflection on lost love: "Once upon a time, there was light in my life/But now there's only love in the darkness," she sings.

The video, a classic from the early days of MTV, was filmed in a creepy old gothic asylum in Surrey, where apparently guard dogs wouldn't enter the downstairs rooms where they used to electroshock patients.

Images included doves being released in slow motion, candles, ninjas and young rebels dancing, Tyler with frighteningly large shoulder pads, fencers, gymnasts, wind machines and shirtless boys wearing swimming goggles being doused with water.

"Faster Than the Speed of Night" received a Grammy nomination for best rock vocal performance, losing to Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield", and Tyler received another nomination for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in the best pop vocal performance category, losing to Irene Cara's "Flashdance — What a Feeling".

After Eclipse

Although she never repeated the resounding success of "Total Eclipse of the Heart", Bonnie Tyler maintained her career in the spotlight in the following decades. Among his best-known works from this period are the singles "Holding Out for a Hero", which was part of the soundtrack for Footloose (1984), and "Here She Comes", from the film Metropolis (1984).

In 2013, the singer returned to her country roots by recording the album Rocks and Honey in Nashville. The album features the duet "What You Need From Me", with Vince Gill, and the ballad "Believe in Me", composed by Desmond Child, Lauren Christy and Christopher Braide. The song was chosen to represent the United Kingdom in that year's Eurovision Song Contest, held in Sweden.

Four years later, in 2017, Tyler participated in an unusual performance alongside the band DNCE, led by Joe Jonas, aboard the cruise ship Oasis of the Seas. During an event organized to accompany a total solar eclipse, she performed "Total Eclipse of the Heart" exactly at the moment the Moon covered the Sun.

His most recent studio album, Between the Earth and the Stars, released in 2019, brought together duets with Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard and Francis Rossi, lead singer of the band Status Quo. In the same year, Bonnie Tyler also participated in a Christmas concert at the Vatican in front of Pope Francis.

In 2023, Tyler was honored by King Charles III with the title of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her artistic contributions.

In her personal life, the singer was married to Robert Sullivan, a real estate businessman and former Olympic judo athlete.

Relationship with Brazil

Bonnie Tyler also had a strong connection with the Brazilian public. In 1987, he recorded alongside Fábio Jr. the song Sem Limites pra Sonhar, a hit in the country in the 1980s.

"I remember him [Fábio Jr.] being a very handsome man who gave me a beautiful gold ring with stones set. He was absolutely beautiful. I can't remember the song now, but we were number 1 in Brazil. That was very exciting", recalled the singer in an interview with Estadão held in 2022, when she went on a Brazilian tour celebrating 50 years of her career. /With AP