As tributes to Bonnie Tyler continue following her death last week at age 75, some of the most memorable stories about her aren't about the singer herself, but about the strange, winding paths her biggest songs took to reach her voice.
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" almost didn't exist as the song fans know today. After hearing Meat Loaf perform "Bat Out of Hell," Tyler sought out its songwriter and producer, Jim Steinman, who introduced her to a song originally imagined for a stage musical based on the vampire tale "Nosferatu." Its now-iconic line "turn around, bright eyes" wasn't written for her at all - Steinman had first used it in a 1969 college musical called "The Dream Engine," years before it became one of the most recognizable lyrics in pop music.
The song, the lead single from her 1983 album "Faster Than the Speed of Night," topped the charts for four weeks and has been streamed more than a billion times on Spotify.
Her career had already taken shape years earlier with 1977's "Lost in France" and a No. 3 hit the following year, "It's a Heartache," before a chance encounter with Meat Loaf's music redirected everything. Decades later, in 2013, Tyler represented the United Kingdom at Eurovision with "Believe in Me," a ballad written by Desmond Child, Lauren Christy, and Christopher Braide. She later described walking onstage behind the British flag as a moment so charged she "thought the roof was going to come off."
Tyler's final creative chapter carried a quieter thread through it. Her 2019 album, "Between the Earth and the Stars," featured duets with Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard, and Status Quo's Francis Rossi - and that same year, she closed things out performing at a Vatican Christmas concert before Pope Francis, a fitting bookend for an artist whose humility traced back to her upbringing in a small Welsh chapel community. Five decades after "Lost in France" first put her on the charts, the songs Bonnie Tyler leaves behind still carry the same unmistakable voice that made them impossible to forget.
Related Article: Bonnie Tyler: Her Cause of Death, $40 Million Net Worth and Biggest Hits Explained
