Bonnie Tyler

Bonnie Tyler, the magnificent Welsh singer with the unmistakable rasp, has left us at 75. She had been hospitalized since last May in Faro, Portugal, after undergoing emergency surgery for a bowel perforation and spending a period in a medically induced coma. Her passing has deeply moved everyone who ever connected with her music, or at least with the hits that made her famous, from "It's A Heartache" to "Total Eclipse Of The Heart", all the way to "Holding Out For A Hero". But her long career is actually studded with great songs and searing performances, often backed by the artistic genius of Jim Steinman, the American producer who chose her as his muse.
Bonnie Tyler released twenty albums in all, selling millions of copies worldwide. We want to remember her with ten essential tracks from her repertoire.

Lost In France

Born in 1951 in Skewen, Wales, under the name Gaynor Hopkins, Bonnie Tyler became one of the most recognizable voices in international music thanks to her unmistakable tone, made even raspier by surgery on her vocal cords to remove some nodules — an episode that ended up becoming one of the defining traits of her style. With "Lost In France", Bonnie broke into the UK Top 10 and won over the wider public, laying the groundwork for a career destined to achieve international success. The single immediately showcased the Welsh singer's personality and expressive power, establishing itself as one of the key tracks of her early years and foreshadowing the extraordinary run of hits she would go on to have in the years that followed.

It's A Heartache

The real turning point, however, came at the end of the Seventies with this aching ballad called "It's A Heartache", which climbed to number three on the US chart and earned her the tag of "the female Rod Stewart". It was her first major international hit, a country-rock ballad that managed to break through in both Europe and the United States. The track fully revealed that husky, gritty, powerful voice that would become the Welsh singer's trademark after her vocal cord surgery, giving her one of the most celebrated and beloved performances of her career.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart

After that worldwide hit came a somewhat transitional period, until the fateful meeting with the man who would guarantee her everlasting fame, Jim Steinman, who produced her entire LP "Faster Than The Speed Of Night" (1983) and wrote her two songs. The first was the one of a lifetime: "Total Eclipse Of The Heart". Steinman had originally written it for Meat Loaf (and one of its passages already appears, in instrumental form, in the soundtrack of the 1980 film "A Small Circle Of Friends"), but a trivial dispute over rights and royalties would end up making Bonnie's fortune: she was the one to land it and turn it into a worldwide hit, as well as an everlasting karaoke anthem in every corner of the globe. Over the top, melodramatic, perfect for belting out at the top of your lungs with its key changes, "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" is the power ballad par excellence with which the Steinman-Tyler duo broke the sound barrier - and the charts: number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, 5 million copies sold. And to think that at first radio stations refused to play it because it was too long and too complex...

Faster Than The Speed Of Night

More driving and rock-leaning, the title track of the album "Faster Than The Speed Of Night" is, from its very title, another 100% Steinman-esque track, with its tempo changes, its accelerations and its ineffable pomposity, well handled by the steely vocal cords of the very blonde Bonnie. The song that gives the 1983 album its title thus marks one of the most distinctly rock moments in Bonnie Tyler's career. The record, the first album by a female artist to debut straight at number one on the British chart, would cement her partnership with Jim Steinman and definitively establish the Welsh singer among the most powerful rock voices of the Eighties, as a kind of "European answer" to the vocal power of America's Pat Benatar.

Have You Ever Seen The Rain

"Have You Ever Seen The Rain" is a great Creedence Clearwater Revival classic, written by John Fogerty and released in 1970 on the album "Pendulum". In 1983, Bonnie Tyler recorded a version of the song for her 1983 album "Faster Than The Speed Of Night". The song was released as the third single from the album in June of that same year and brought the track back into the spotlight, thanks to her white-hot performance, in which, as usual, she spares no expense on her vocal cords, letting loose with commanding vocal runs.

Holding Out For A Hero

Film soundtrack work also played an important role in the partnership between Bonnie Tyler and Jim Steinman. The Welsh singer, for instance, landed this blazing pop-rock anthem - propped up by pounding synth pulses, swirling piano flourishes, epic choirs and relentless drum rolls - in one of the cult sequences of Herbert Ross's musical comedy "Footloose" (1984). The Welsh singer naturally doesn't disappoint, delivering another one of her full-throated performances, which she would revisit in the version included on her 1986 LP "Secret Dreams And Forbidden Fire".

Ravishing

By the mid-Eighties, Bonnie Tyler was among the most successful vocalists on the pop-rock scene. And once again she drew on the support and songwriting of her mentor Steinman for her sixth LP, "Secret Dreams And Forbidden Fire" (1986). Bonnie's bluesy roar reinvigorates the baroque pomp of this sprawling opening track called "Ravishing", amid the usual rhythmic piano, triumphant melodies, sharp guitars and obligatory choirs.

Loving You's A Dirty Job But Somebody's Gotta Do It

For another track on the album "Secret Dreams And Forbidden Fire", with the amusingly titled "Loving You's A Dirty Job But Somebody's Gotta Do It", an old associate of Jim Steinman's, Todd Rundgren, was also brought in for a duet with Bonnie Tyler, built around another of his magnificent melodic progressions, which once again dances precariously between the cloying and the inspired (but once again, it's precisely the excess that saves it).

Rebel Without A Clue

Finally, to close out in style the trio of tracks from "Secret Dreams And Forbidden Fire" - one of Tyler's finest albums - come the more than eight minutes of the poignant "Rebel Without A Clue", where the ghost of Diane Lane/Ellen Aim, the magnificent heroine of "Streets Of Fire" (the film for which Steinman wrote the score) stirs awake in the measured piano intro before Bonnie takes over the whole scene, letting her voice tower along treacherous melodic paths, at the heart of yet another epic scenario of drum rolls, choirs and wild guitar and piano solos. You know the philosophy of Less is more? Well, this is the exact opposite. As David Hiltbrand wrote in People, "Tyler sings only in capital letters, and Steinman produces only at a full gallop." Take it or leave it. And we take it without hesitation.

If You Were A Woman

Released in 1986, it's one of the emblematic songs of the more mature phase of Bonnie Tyler's career. Written by Desmond Child, it tells of the misunderstandings within a romantic relationship and is carried along by a compelling melodic-rock arrangement. The song became a permanent fixture in the Welsh singer's repertoire and also achieved a curious distinction: its melody was in fact reworked by Child himself a few months later to create Bon Jovi's "You Give Love A Bad Name", destined to become one of the greatest hits in rock history.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google