Once upon a time, there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart
Bonnie Tyler has gone to the angels. That welsh girl could sing even inside cold rivers. So when she sang about standing in cold rain feeling like a clown because he let her down you believed her.
It's A Heartache anthem of ww double p
And I’ve been with her through every decade. She was performing only three months ago (after two knee surgeries!!) and was scheduled to tour throughout 2026 and 2027.
I loved her True Grit.
Her spirit. Her attitude. Her down to earth humility.
She was born Gaynor Hopkins to a Welsh coal-miner and lived in a Council house with an outside loo. She loved The Beatles, Top of the Pops, the Swinging Blue Jeans (Hippy hippy shake).
I saw her a few times live over the years – especially in the 90’s. And memorably in an open air, ancient Roman theatre in Baalbek, Lebanon as the sun set among the cedars and the Mediterranean…
Total Eclipse of the Heart went on for seven minutes, featured a pipe organ solo that sounded like it was being played by Count Dracula and was punctuated by explosions that were supposed to represent the sound of nuclear bombs being dropped: as was his wont, Steinman claimed it was heavily influenced by Wagner.
It would have sounded completely ridiculous, were it not for the fact that Tyler’s vocal gave the impression she didn’t think it was ridiculous at all: she sang it as if her life depended on it.
To use a modern term, she committed to the bit so completely that her voice emerged as the song’s star attraction, rather than being swallowed up by the absolute bedlam going on around it. Fast forward the song to about three and half minutes in:
Count Dracula has just finished doing his stuff, a massed chorale of backing vocalists keep urging bright eyes to turn around, there are faux nuclear explosions going off left, right and centre, but when Tyler’s vocal reappears – “EVERY NOW AND THEN I FALL APART!” – you forget about everything other than her.
Bonnie Tyler ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’
Total Eclipse of the Heart singer Bonnie Tyler dies aged 75
