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 St...