the gravelly voiced, Grammy-nominated Welsh pop star whose 1983 chart-topping power ballad âTotal Eclipse of the Heartâ enchanted succeeding generations with its bombastic charms during solar and lunar eclipses, has died. She was 75.
Tyler died unexpectedly in a hospital in Portugal where she was being treated for an illness, her family said Thursday in a statement on her website. She was hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery. She had been placed in an induced coma for a period but was reportedly and expected to make a good recovery.
âBonnieâs 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,â her family said.
Tyler earned three Grammy nods and in 2013 represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest, where she came in 19th. She was honored as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth II, thanks mainly to âTotal Eclipse of the Heart,â which has had more than 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017 and 2024.
The song spent four weeks at No. 1, and when Stereogum reevaluated it in 2020, the music outlet declared it an âextinction-level event rendered in musical form.â
âItâs pop music as heart-pounding, chest-thumping, blood-gargling, heavens-falling passion explosion. Itâs sheer spectacle. Itâs fireworks and lasers and lightning and thunder. It soars and swoops and barrel-rolls,â the site said.
The song has never really gone away: it was covered by the English singer Nicki French in 1995, and the band Westlife in 2006. Cate Blanchett sang it while hitting Billy Bob Thornton with her car in 2001âs âBandits,â it appeared in a wedding scene in 2003âs âOld Schoolâ and on a U.K. version of âThe X Factor.â
Early life
Tyler was born â as Gaynor Hopkins â a coal minerâs daughter in public housing with an outside toilet in Skewen, Wales, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) outside Swansea. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers.
She adored the Beatles and her first album was âA Hard Dayâs Night.â The first song she bought, at 13, was âHippy Hippy Shakeâ by the Swinging Blue Jeans and she watched âTop of the Popsâ religiously, according to her memoir, âStraight From the Heart.â
She would record âTop of the Popsâ on a reel-to-reel two-track recorder and write down the lyrics of songs she loved. Her favorites were by Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.
âI used to sing them into my hairbrush for hours and hours, and thatâs how it all started for me. I fell in love with singing just from doing that. Looking back, even then my voice had a husky tone to it, but I didnât think much of it. I thought everyoneâs voices were different from each otherâs,â she wrote.
In 1976 she had to have surgery to remove nodules on her throat, leaving her with that trademark vocal sound. Changing her name to Sherene Davis, she was fronting a soul band when she was discovered by talent scout Roger Bell, who brought her to London for demo sessions. Then she waited for a label until RCA said it was interested.
Under her new RCA-sanctioned name Bonnie Tyler, her debut album âThe World Starts Tonightâ in 1977 contained her first chart hit, âLost in France,â and she was nominated for a breakthrough artists award at the Brit Awards. She then had a No. 3 hit in 1978 with âItâs a Heartache,â but soon drifted. She then signed with Sony and saw Meat Loaf perform âBat Out of Hellâ on the BBC. Impressed, she requested to work with Meat Loaf songwriter and producer Jim Steinman.
âTotal Eclipse of the Heartâ
Steinman introduced her to his song âTotal Eclipse of the Heart,â which would become the debut single for her fifth studio album, âFaster Than the Speed of Night.â He borrowed one of the songâs lyrics â âTurn around, bright eyesâ â from his 1969 musical âThe Dream Engine,â written when he was a student at Massachusettsâ Amherst College. He told her the song was from a prospective musical version of âNosferatu.â
âJim liked to put down a basic rhythm track, do nine takes of the song, choose the best one and then put the kitchen sink on there, like Phil Spector used to,â Tyler told The Guardian in 2023. âHe gave me a cassette to listen to in my hotel and we both preferred take two.â
Featuring E Street Band members Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums, âTotal Eclipseâ is a rumination on lost love: âOnce upon a time there was light in my life/But now thereâs only love in the dark,â she sings.
, a staple of early-days MTV, was shot in a frightening gothic former asylum in Surrey, where the guard dogs apparently wouldnât set foot in the rooms downstairs where they used to give people electric shock treatment. The visuals included slow-motion tossed doves, candles, dancing ninjas, dancing greasers, Tyler in frighteningly big shoulder pads, fencers, gymnasts, wind machines and shirtless boys wearing swim goggles being doused with water.
âFaster Than the Speed of Nightâ earned a Grammy nomination for best rock vocal performance â losing to Pat Benatarâs âLove Is a Battlefieldâ â and Tyler got another nod for âTotal Eclipse of the Heartâ in the best pop vocal performance category, losing to Irene Caraâs âFlashdance â What a Feeling.â
After the âEclipseâ
Tyler never reached such dizzying heights again but stayed current with such movie soundtrack singles as âHolding Out For a Heroâ â from 1984âs âFootlooseâ â and âHere She Comesâ from âMetropolisâ also in 1984.
Her 2019 disc âBetween the Earth and the Starsâ featured duets with Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard and Status Quoâs Francis Rossi, and she ended that year performing a Vatican Christmas concert before Pope Francis.
In 2013, she switched gears to make a country-flavored record in Nashville, âRocks and Honey,â which included the Vince Gill duet âWhat You Need From Meâ and a little ballad called âBelieve in Me,â written by American songwriter Desmond Child and British songwriters Lauren Christy and Christopher Braide. âBelieve in Meâ was picked to represent the United Kingdom at that yearâs Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden.
âIt was an absolutely wonderful atmosphere there,â she told the San Francisco Examiner in 2023. âI was being interviewed every 15, 20 minutes, and when I walked out onstage behind the British flag, I thought the roof was going to come off! It was awesome, just awesome!â
In 2017, she joined Joe Jonasâ band DNCE for a performance on the cruise ship Oasis of the Seas as part of a âTotal Eclipse Cruise.â When the moon passed in front of the sun, they played âTotal Eclipse of the Heart.â
Tyler was married to property developer and former Olympic judo competitor Robert Sullivan.
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Associated Press writer Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that Tyler was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, not 2023.
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