Bonnie Tyler had a peculiar career: two bursts of global success that seemed to have almost nothing to do with each other beyond the name that appeared on the records. Her first big British hits, 1976’s Lost in France and 1977’s It’s a Heartache, were superior examples of what writer Pete Paphides subsequently dubbed “medium wave pop”, the largely forgotten stuff that actually filled the charts and Radio One’s playlists at a time when reductive rock histories would have you believe the entire nation was gripped by punk. They were a little bit soft rock, a little bit country, a little reminiscent of reliable mid-70s hitmakers Smokie, and so catchy that no one seemed to notice that somewhere between their respective releases, Tyler’s voice had changed dramatically: possessed of a rather sweet tone on Lost in France, an operation to remove nodules on her vocal cords had caused her to develop a striking Rod Stewart-like huskiness by the time of It’s a Heartache.
It looked like It’s a Heartache would turn Tyler into a huge star: it sold 6m copies, and the accompanying album made the Top 3 on the US country chart. But said success proved difficult to sustain, compounded by the fact that her record label seemed bizarrely unsure what to do with her. Get her to cover Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as on Louisiana Rain? Aim her squarely at the easy listening market via a version of Sometimes When We Touch? Encourage her to go disco, as on the fabulously camp (The World is Full of) Married Men?
None of it really worked and that might have been that, had Tyler not taken matters into her own hands. A rock fan, she considered asking Phil Collins or Jeff Lynne to work with her, but had the great fortune to approach Jim Steinman at precisely the right moment. The producer and songwriter’s relationship with Meat Loaf was on the outs after 1981’s Dead Ringer had failed to replicate the multi-platinum sales of Bat Out of Hell, while the release of his solo album, Bad for Good, had conclusively proved that no one was interested in listening to Jim Steinman sing his own songs. Two flops in, Steinman evidently felt he had something to prove, and the best way to prove it was by doubling down: never a man much given to subtlety, the songs he presented Tyler were grandiloquent even by his standards, making Bat Out of Hell sound like an ambient album.
Because Tyler’s voice reminded him of John Fogerty, he suggested they cover Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Have You Ever Seen the Rain?, Steinman’s version of which transformed the rootsy acoustic original into a mass of mock-classical piano and squealing, metal-adjacent guitar solos; it also featured castanets. This, it turned out, was merely an amuse-bouche before the main course.
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.
The end result couldn’t have been further from It’s Heartache if it tried. It went platinum in nine countries, hit No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, propelled Tyler’s album Faster Than the Speed of Night to sales of 3m, and proved utterly impervious to the vagaries of fashion. In the 21st century, it kept randomly re-entering the charts in Britain, America, Canada, France, Denmark, Belgium and Hungary; in 2026 it surpassed a billion streams on Spotify.
It was success on a scale that Tyler would find impossible to repeat, although she came close with Holding Out for a Hero, another Steinman extravaganza, this time from the soundtrack of teen movie Footloose: featuring more explosions, another committed Tyler vocal and a Giorgio Moroder-ish synth backing, it was another huge hit.
But Total Eclipse of the Heart might have scuppered her partnership with Steinman, precisely because it was so successful: his career revitalised, Steinman found himself in demand once again, working with everyone from Barbra Streisand to Def Leppard to wrestler Hulk Hogan, which meant he seemed only partly present on 1986’s Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire. He executive produced and wrote four of the nine songs – lovers of his more-is-more approach are directed to Rebel Without a Clue – leaving others to take up the slack with varying degrees of success: with the best will in the world, Freda Payne’s 1970 soul hit Band of Gold probably wasn’t the ideal candidate for a Steinman-esque makeover (even if it was reportedly the song that got Tyler noticed when a talent scout heard her cover it in a Swansea club back in the 1970s).
Thereafter, her career in the UK and America slumped, and she was unlucky not to enjoy a career resurgence with The Best, the lead single from 1988’s Hide Your Heart. It’s hard to work out why it wasn’t a big hit anywhere other than Norway: clearly it wasn’t anything to do with the song, as evidenced by the fact that, when Tina Turner covered it the following year, it sold millions of copies and became her signature song (modest to a fault, Tyler suggested Turner had “done it much better than me”). Not even the concerted effort of 1995’s Free Spirit – which briefly reunited her with Steinman, and elsewhere involved everything from collaborations with Jeff Lynne to guest appearances by Lenny Kravitz to dance remixes by Ralphi Rosario – could restore her to the charts.
Still, she continued to score platinum albums in Europe well into the 90s, and her tours never stopped taking in arenas. A woman who, in the early 80s, had interrupted her string of Steinman-produced opuses by recording a duet with Shakin’ Stevens, her musical approach remained incredibly varied: she seemed just as happy making prog rock with Rick Wakeman or former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett or gamely singing Britain’s 2013 Eurovision entry as she did collaborating with David Guetta, rerecording her vocal from Total Eclipse of the Heart for his 2025 single Together. Once more, she sang it as if her life depended on it.
