Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh singer of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Holding Out For A Hero,” has died at age 75.
Michael Ochs Archives / Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images
By 
Chris Lavergne
The rasp that made him famous came from an accident. After undergoing vocal cord surgery in 1977, doctors told him to rest his voice. But when he screamed one day, his voice changed forever, giving him the bad sound that was heard on his biggest hits.
Tyler died on Wednesday at a hospital near Faro, Portugal, where he had lived for years, according to a post on his official Facebook account. The reason was the illness he was being treated for. Back in May, the account said he underwent emergency bowel surgery and was placed in a coma, and a rep later said he was “very unwell and in intensive care.”
Jim Steinman wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for an unfinished musical about the vampire Nosferatu, and pitched it to Meat Loaf. When Meat Loaf lost his voice during recording, Steinman gave it to Tyler for his 1983 album “Faster Than the Speed of Night.” He knew it the moment he heard it: “I knew this was the song I had been waiting for all my life.” It hit No. 1, and later Meat Loaf said to him, “Dang.
Gaynor Hopkins was born in Skewen, South Wales, the youngest of six children of a coal miner. He rode his voice from the Welsh pub-rock scene to international hits including “Heartbreak,” “Lost in France,” and “Holding Out for a Hero” from “Footloose.”
He represented Britain at Eurovision in 2013 and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for services to music. He continued to record in the 70s, releasing his last album, “In Berlin,” in 2024.
She married civil engineer Robert Sullivan in 1973 and they lived together for the rest of her life. They had no children, but he told the Guardian that “there are no children missing in my life,” listing five grandchildren, 16 nieces and nephews, and 12 nieces and nephews.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office called him “one of Britain’s greatest recording artists, an iconic figure,” and said his catalog “continues to touch lives, flood dance floors, and fill karaoke booths.”
He didn’t seem worried about living in the shadow of his biggest hit. “How can you imagine it would still be so big today,” he said last year, “and people who weren’t even born then would be singing it at karaoke?”
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