Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh pop legend behind hits including ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and ‘Holding Out for a Hero’, has died. According to a post on her official Facebook page, the singer passed away at a hospital near her home in the Portuguese city of Faro. She had undergone emergency surgery in May to treat a perforated intestine and was placed in an induced coma in the intensive care unit. Though she woke up from her coma on June 15, she died unexpectedly as a result of the original illness. Tyler was 75 years old.
Born Gaynor Hopkins in the Welsh town of Skewen, Tyler was inspired to pursue a singing career after placing second in a local talent contest as a teenager. She performed as a backing singer and in R&B groups such as Mumbles and Imagination before landing a contract with RCA Records in 1975. Her debut album, The World Starts Tonight, was released in February 1977. That spring, Tyler had surgery to remove vocal-cord nodules and was advised by her doctor to rest her voice for six weeks. “I was so frustrated that I’d have to drive all the way back home, I let out an ‘Oh no!’ scream,” she wrote in her book, Straight from the Heart. “When I went for a check-up with the specialist, he looked at me and said, ‘You could have done permanent damage.'” Instead, it led to the raspy tone that became a trademark of her singing.
;;It’s a Heartache’, the second single from her next album Natural Force, became one of her most successful international singles. Unhappy that her career was steering towards country music, Tyler left RCA for Columbia once her contract expired. She teamed up with Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman, who wrote and produced her immortal 1983 single ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. Recorded with E Street Band members Max Weinberg on drums and Roy Bittan on keyboards, as well as guitarist Rick Derringer and backing vocalist Rory Dodd, the power ballad’s striking theatricality became inextricable from its music video, which was filmed in a former asylum in England.
Steinman went on to produce Tyler’s 1984 single ‘Holding Out for a Hero’ for the Footloose soundtrack, which peaked at No. 34 in the US. That same year, ‘Here She Comes’, written by Giorgio Moroder and Peter Bellotte for the soundtrack to a restoration of the 1927 film Metropolis, earned Tyler a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
Though her ’90s records weren’t as successful in the US and UK, Tyler still had hits in mainland Europe, including a 2003 duet version of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ with French singer Kareen Antonn that shot to No. 1 in France. Ten years later, she sang the original on a cruise ship during a full solar eclipse. Tyler released a total of 18 studio albums, the most recent of which was 2021’s The Best Is Yet to Come.
Tyler is survived by her husband of more than 50 years, Robert Sullivan, who is Catherine Zeta-Jones’s cousin. On Instagram, Zeta-Jones wrote: “My heart is broken with the news that our dearest Bonnie Tyler has passed away. Bonnie was married to my cousin and has been such a part of my life. We are photographed here together the night before my wedding. She sang and rocked it at my wedding. An extraordinary woman with vocals to match. A one of kind artist, who so easily could have been a comedian because she was one of the funniest people I ever met. Thank you Bonnie for the joy you brought so many. Sleep tight beautiful lady. We shall forever ‘Keep a Welcome in the Hillsides’ of Wales for you.”
