Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, famous for the highly successful ballads of the 80s such as "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding Out for a Hero", has passed away at the age of 75, as reported by the BBC on Thursday.
"Bonnie's family and team are deeply saddened to announce that Bonnie passed away unexpectedly last night in a hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness she was being treated for," said the team of the legendary singer.
In May, the artist, originally from Skewen in South Wales, underwent emergency intestinal surgery in Portugal and later entered an induced coma.
The husky voice that made Bonnie Tyler's singing unmistakable was the result of an accident. After an operation to remove nodules on her vocal cords in 1977, doctors ordered her to rest her voice completely. However, one day she screamed in anger, permanently altering her voice.
Six years later, the Welsh singer released her most famous song, 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', which capitalized on that characteristic husky tone and earned her a Grammy nomination.
Shortly after, she released 'Holding Out for a Hero', another dramatic rock ballad that solidified her place in the British pop scene. Both songs have since been featured in movies, TV series, and commercials.
Tyler, whose discography also includes hits like 'It's a Heartache' and 'Lost in France', passed away at the age of 75, as reported by the BBC on Thursday.
"I didn't even dare to open my mouth"
Tyler was born with the name Gaynor Hopkins in South Wales in 1951. She was the fourth of six siblings, the daughter of a coal miner and a homemaker.
She grew up in a four-bedroom council house with a large garden in the village of Skewen, on the outskirts of Swansea. "I think Mom and Dad had it very hard raising such a large family with so little," she told The Guardian in 2012.
Music was a part of her daily life: it constantly played on the record player at home or was sung by her mother while doing household chores, ranging from opera to 'Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini'.
At seven, she attended a musical at her local church. There, she fell in love with the song 'There's No Business Like Show Business' by Irving Berlin, and the desire to perform was born in her.
"I didn't even dare to open my mouth in front of anyone, and yet there was a part of me that longed to sing in front of an audience," she recalled in her memoir, 'Straight from the Heart'.
She began her career as a backing vocalist during her teens before releasing several albums of her own in the 1970s.
But it wasn't until the early 80s, when she started working with American composer Jim Steinman, that she achieved commercial success.
She convinced Steinman—already famous for composing 'Bat Out of Hell' for Meat Loaf—by sending him demos of theatrical rock songs that she felt perfectly matched her voice.
Recalling the first time she heard 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', she said, "I knew it was the song I had been waiting for my whole life."
Performed by Tyler, that piece, which Steinman described as "a wagnerian onslaught of sound and emotion," reached number one in both the UK and the US.
With its unforgettable opening—"Once upon a time, I was falling in love / But now I'm only falling apart"—the song has surpassed 1 billion streams on Spotify.
It has also been featured in movies like 'Old School' and 'Bandits', in series like 'Glee' and 'Grey's Anatomy', and starred in a Mastercard advertising campaign.
The Birth of Bonnie Tyler
From the 90s onwards, she enjoyed greater success in Norway, Austria, and France than in her own country, although she represented the UK in Eurovision 2013 and in 2022, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her contribution to music.
In 1973, she married real estate developer Robert Sullivan, her first serious boyfriend. "I'm still very much in love with him, and he with me," she said four decades later. The couple did not have children.
Tyler never had a special fondness for her birth name. Explaining how she chose her stage name, she told BBC Radio Wales: "I took a broadsheet newspaper and made a list of all the first names and another with all the surnames I found. I combined them until Bonnie Tyler came out." "And it's been a fantastic name," she concluded.