Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh singer whose raspy voice turned Total Eclipse of the Heart, It’s a Heartache and Holding Out for a Hero into global power-ballad classics, has died at the age of 75.
A statement posted on her official website said Tyler “unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for.” Her family and team said they were “heartbroken” and asked for privacy.
Bonnie Tyler at Eurovision 2013
(Photo: Ragnar Singsaas/Getty Images)
Tyler had been hospitalized in Portugal in May after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery. She was later placed in a medically induced coma to aid her recovery, and last month her spokesperson said she was out of the coma but remained “very unwell” in intensive care.
Born Gaynor Hopkins in Skewen, South Wales, Tyler grew up in a council house in Neath before being discovered by talent scout Roger Bell while performing at a club in Swansea. She released her first single, Lost in France, in 1977.
That same year, she broke through internationally with It’s a Heartache, a country-pop ballad that reached No. 4 on the UK singles chart and No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
Her defining hit came in 1983 with Total Eclipse of the Heart, a sweeping rock ballad written by Jim Steinman, best known for his work with Meat Loaf. The song topped the charts in both the UK and the United States and became one of the most recognizable pop anthems of the decade.
The track was originally titled Vampires in Love, having been written for a musical version of Nosferatu. Tyler later said she never tired of performing it. “I love it because everyone can’t wait to sing it,” she told BBC News.
Total Eclipse of the Heart earned Tyler a Grammy nomination. She received two more nominations for the album Faster Than the Speed of Night and the single Here She Comes.
Steinman also wrote another of Tyler’s major 1980s hits, Holding Out for a Hero, the dramatic pop-rock anthem recorded for the Footloose soundtrack. The song later reached a new generation of listeners after appearing in Shrek 2.
Tyler represented the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2013, finishing 19th out of 26 acts. In 2023, she was made an MBE for services to music.
Her career continued well beyond the peak of the 1980s. Last year, she released Together, a club version of Total Eclipse of the Heart produced by David Guetta and Hypaton. This year, 43 years after its release, the original song passed one billion streams on Spotify.
“I’m really happy, when you think about it, there’s only 8.3 billion people in the world,” she said.
Tyler also famously performed Total Eclipse of the Heart aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean during the 2017 solar eclipse, leaning into the song’s enduring association with the celestial event.
She is survived by her husband of more than 50 years, Robert Sullivan.