Total Eclipse of the Heart was her biggest song, but it almost never happened.published at 10:22 Moscow time
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image Source, Jakubaszek/Redferns
Bonnie Tyler’s most famous song was undoubtedly Total Eclipse of the Heart, a bloated rock opera that burned with an almost religious fervor.
It topped the charts in the US and UK, as well as Ireland, Australia and Zimbabwe, and was also performed in both Spanish (Eclipse Total del Amor) and Italian (Eclissi del cuore). But this almost never happened.
In 1983, Tyler suffered a string of unsuccessful singles. Her record label wanted her to return to the country rock sound of It’s a Heartache.
But after seeing Meat Loaf perform Bat Out Of Hell on the BBC’s Old Gray Whistle Test, she set her sights on working with his writer Jim Steinman.
Steinman was skeptical until new manager Tyler sent him a cassette of her rock demo.
Intrigued, he asked to meet her in New York, and they immediately hit it off.
“I considered her one of the most passionate voices I had ever heard in rock ‘n’ roll since Janis Joplin,” Steinman said in a 1983 YouTube video. That same evening, he played “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to Tyler sitting at the piano and proposed the song to her.
Here’s how Tyler described the moment in Fred Bronson’s Book of Number One Hits: “When he plays, he practically punches the (piano) floor. He’s incredible!
“He won’t give you (the song) on tape. He has to tell you a big story and play it for you.”
It became the fifth best-selling UK single of 1983; and cemented Tyler’s place in rock history.