Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh singer whose epic power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart” became a definitive pop classic of the 1980s, died yesterday (July 8) at a hospital near her home in the Portuguese city of Faro, according to a post on her official Facebook page. She had been in the hospital since May, when she received emergency intestinal surgery and was placed in a coma. She had spent the past two months recovering in intensive care, but died unexpectedly as a result of the original illness, the statement noted. Tyler was 75.
Born Gaynor Hopkins in the Welsh town of Skewen, Tyler grew up in a working-class household with her mother and coal-miner father. As a teenager, she sang covers at local pubs and clubs while working at a grocery store. A talent scout helped her pitch to record labels, including RCA, which signed her in 1975. She adopted her stage name, teamed with the songwriting duo Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe, and, in 1976, released debut single “My! My! Honeycomb,” a lively blend of country-rock and pop that hinted at her preternatural ability to straddle genres. Her first international hit, “It’s a Heartache,” came the following year: a softly strummed country lament coarsened by Tyler’s newfound rasp—the result of surgery to remove nodules on her vocal cords.
The rasp became her calling card. Emboldened by her sudden fame, Tyler signed to Sony in the early 1980s and, anxious to reinvent herself, petitioned the bombastic songwriter Jim Steinman to plot her a pivot to arena rock. Steinman had been working on “Total Eclipse of the Heart”—an incendiary musical theater number originally intended for a Nosferatu production—but his usual client, Meat Loaf, had lost his voice, so he asked Tyler to sing it. Though she was unsure of the seven-minute song’s commercial potential, her 1982 recording—featuring E Street Band members Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums—was cut down for radio and went to No. 1 in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as several other countries around the world. The song has endured as a karaoke classic, eclipse soundtrack, and versatile pop resource, adapted by artists ranging from David Guetta to the Beta Band and the cast of Glee.
Tyler’s superstardom was bound to the rise of MTV. The theatrically gothic “Total Eclipse” video, shot in a former asylum in England, is synonymous with ’80s excess. Another icon of the decade, Footloose, produced Tyler’s next major hit, 1984’s “Holding Out for a Hero.” The extravagant, hi-NRG single showcased the breadth of Tyler’s husky grandeur, which proved a perfect fit for Giorgio Moroder. The Eurodisco pioneer enlisted her for “Here She Comes” the same year, earning Tyler her third Grammy nomination in two years.
As her international stardom waned, Tyler continued to release more than a dozen albums that often produced hits in mainland Europe, including a “Total Eclipse of the Heart” duet with French star Kareen Antonn that spent 10 weeks atop the French chart. Tyler took a break in 2005 but returned eight years later with Rocks and Honey, launching a late-career run that continued until her final studio album, The Best Is Yet to Come, in 2021.
Tyler is survived by her husband, the property developer Robert Sullivan, whose cousin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, posted a tribute to Tyler on Instagram. “My heart is broken with the news that our dearest Bonnie Tyler has passed away,” she wrote, captioning a photograph of the two of them taken the night before Zeta-Jones’ wedding, where Tyler “sang and rocked it.” She added that Tyler was “an extraordinary woman with vocals to match. A one of kind artist, who so easily could have been a comedian because she was one of the funniest people I ever met. Thank you Bonnie for the joy you brought so many. Sleep tight beautiful lady. We shall forever ‘Keep A Welcome In The Hillsides’ of Wales for you.”
