Bonnie Tyler was never afraid to go bigger. The raspy-voiced Welsh singer, who died Wednesday at 75, was best known to pop fans — and to karaoke enthusiasts — for her smash 1983 single “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” an era-defining power ballad that lived up to its dramatic title with a series of escalating musical climaxes. Yet that wasn’t her only hit to go happily over the top. Here, in the order they were released, are Tyler’s five essential songs.
‘It’s a Heartache’ (1977)
Like a female version of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May,” Tyler’s breakout single uses a brisk, jangling folk-rock arrangement to deliver the regrets of a romantic who’s discovered only too late that love makes fools of its believers. (Stewart himself cut the song three decades later.) Tyler had company on the charts with “It’s a Heartache” in 1978 when Juice Newton and Ronnie Spector released their own versions of the tune written by Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe. But the sob in Tyler’s vocal made her recording — a No. 3 hit on Billboard’s Hot 100 — the one to weep along with.
‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ (1983)
Originally conceived by the composer Jim Steinman for a musical he was writing about the vampire Nosferatu, Tyler’s signature hit aims for — and achieves — a kind of gothic-Broadway euphoria that’s proved as irresistible to amateur singers as to advertisers, who over the years have put “Total Eclipse” in commercials for everything from beer to laundry detergent to low-cal brownies. To listen today to the song, which spent four weeks at No. 1 and earned a Grammy nomination for female pop vocal performance, is to assume you’ve already absorbed every drop of its melodrama. Lean in, though, and you’ll hear how carefully she’s building toward a feeling of complete abandon.
‘Holding Out for a Hero’ (1984)
Tyler reteamed with Steinman (who died in 2021) for this pumping synth-rock jam from the soundtrack to “Footloose.” The implicit joke in the song is that no “streetwise Hercules,” as Tyler describes the man she seeks, could ever come on stronger or faster than she herself does over Steinman’s relentless groove. She is the hero.
‘If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)’ (1986)
More mid-’80s gender studies — “How’s it feel to be the hunter? / How’s it feel to be the prey?” — in the form of a glossy rave-up penned by Desmond Child, who’d go on to huge success writing for Bon Jovi. Indeed, Child later admitted he all but rewrote “If You Were a Woman” to create Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name,” which topped the Hot 100 just six months after Tyler’s song gave out at No. 77.
‘Making Love Out of Nothing at All’ (1995)
Stuck behind “Total Eclipse” at No. 2 in 1983? Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” which Steinman had written for the feathery soft-rock duo as a bit of consumer bait on its first greatest-hits collection. Twelve years later, Tyler offered her own reading of the song — and extended it to nearly the 8-minute mark just to show she could.
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