Fans will have the chance to say goodbye to Bonnie Tyler in Wales next month, with funeral arrangements now announced for the late pop-rock legend.
As detailed by a funeral notice shared by William Pressdee Funeralcare on behalf of her family, a celebration of life service for Tyler will be held at Swansea Minster, St. Mary’s Church, on Monday, August 17, at noon BST.
Two days before that (August 15), Tyler’s coffin will be brought back to her home in Mumbles at 3:30pm, with members of the public invited to line Newton Road from 3:15pm to pay their respects as the procession passes through.
Following the Swansea service, Tyler will make a final journey through Skewen, Neath Port Talbot, the village where she grew up before her unmistakable voice shot her from the local club circuit to international fame. The procession is expected to travel through Skewen at approximately 1:20pm ahead of a private family service.
Her family has requested that those wishing to honour Tyler’s memory donate to Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital for Wales and Cerebral Palsy Cymru, two charities for which she served as a patron.
Tyler, born Gaynor Hopkins, died last week (July 8) at age 75 in a hospital in Portugal, where she had been receiving treatment for an ongoing illness. In a statement previously shared on the ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ singer’s official website, her family said she “unexpectedly passed away” as a result of the illness for which she was being treated.
The funeral notice remembered Tyler as “a warm, generous artist whose music touched generations and continues to fill dance floors and karaoke booths around the world.”
“Her legacy lives on in the timeless songs that made her a legend,” the notice added.
Countless fans and figures from the music world have shared tributes to the singer following her death, including Sir Cliff Richard, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bryan Adams, Suzi Quatro and Rod Stewart.
In NME’s tribute to Tyler, Nick Levine nodded to her “gloriously overwrought” vocal style, writing: “A lesser singer could have been eclipsed by her biggest hit, but Bonnie Tyler was too distinctive, both in her gravelly vocal style and glamorous yet grounded persona, to let this happen. Her 18th and final album, released in 2021, was pointedly titled ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’; as she liked to mention in interviews, she was a “working-class girl who never stopped working”.
“Sleep well, bright eyes.”
