Total Eclipse of the Heart was her biggest song – but it almost never happenedpublished at 10:22 BST
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Jakubaszek/RedfernsBonnie Tyler’s best-known song was undoubtedly Total Eclipse of the Heart – an overblown rock opera that burns with an almost religious zeal.
It topped the charts in the US and the UK, as well as Ireland, Australia and Zimbabwe, and has been covered in both Spanish (Eclipse Total del Amor) and Italian (Eclissi del cuore). But it almost never happened.
In 1983, Tyler had suffered a string of flop singles. Her record label wanted her to go back to the country-rock sound of It’s a Heartache.
But, after seeing Meat Loaf performing Bat Out Of Hell on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, she’d set her sights on working with his writer, Jim Steinman.
Steinman was sceptical until Tyler’s new manager sent him a cassette tape of her rock demos.
Intrigued, he asked to meet her in New York and they immediately hit it off.
“I thought she one of the most passionate voices I’d ever heard in rock & roll since Janis Joplin,” Steinman said in a 1983 YouTube video. That same night, he played Total Eclipse of the Heart to Tyler, sitting at his piano, and offered her the song.
Here’s how Tyler described the moment in Fred Bronson’s Billboard Book of Number One Hits: “When he plays, he practically knocks [the piano] through the floor. He’s incredible!
“He won’t give [the song] to you on tape. He has to tell you the big story and play it for you.”
It became the UK’s fifth best-selling single of 1983; and cemented Tyler’s place in rock history.
