BONNIE TYLER – "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"

“Turn around…” for a rare case of stadium rock from a girlie, albeit a bit of a scary one. As Tom suggests, this is a good production and smoky old Bonnie really flings herself into it. For me it lacks the class of “Wuthering Heights” but this is a mighty fine blast from “the female Rod Stewart” so that one is not minded to attempt to chase this woman back over the Severn Bridge from whence she came (unlike many other artists from the Principality, past and present) and many hard men would probably not have the balls to try anyway.

Hm, yes, I can see how you might admire the gargantuan scale of Steinman’s creations, but they just sound so UGLY to me! Caterwauling vocals and thumping and booming.

I suppose that I can find the comic overreach in the lyrics alone, which have got a pleasing join the dots lunatic escalation of metaphor and larger and larger delivery (falling in love/ falling apart!/ “Once upon a time there was light in my life/But now there’s only love in the dark!”/ total – eclipse – OF THE HEART!”. But this is always overwhelmed by the sheer discomfort of having to actually listen to it.

The only times when I can really find value in what Steinman does is when he’s orchestrating the work of somebody else with some sort of artistic vision of the world that I can engage with, be that Andrew Eldrich or Gary Barlow (‘This Corrosion’ may be my favourite hit of the eighties).

I slightly prefered the nineties rave version of this by Nikki French, if only because it seemed to wind up rock purists.

#2 Watch: A week of Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’. A bit over-familiar, but certainly preferable to my ears.

I think I must have had something against Bonnie Tyler (more of that later!) because this was another Number One I remember pretty much loathing at the time.

Strangely enough I’ve come to despise it less as a song with the passing years having seen it performed at karaoke bars so many times – I can understand the appeal of singing it. Listening to Bonnie Tyler, however, is something which remains a particularly painful experience for me.

TOTPWatch: Bonnie Tyler twice performed Total Eclipse on Top Of The Pops;

24 February 1983. Also in the studio that week were; Spandau ballet, The Thompson Twins and Eurythmics, plus Zoo’s interpretation of ‘She Means Nothing To Me’. The hosts were Dave Lee Travis and Andy Peebles.

17 March 1983. Also in the studio that week were; Bananarama, Mezzoforte, Bucks Fizz and Joan Armatrading. Tony Blackburn and Gary Davies were the hosts.

(I was wrong to say that Zoo had been mothballed at the end of 1982. They still turn up, very infrequently, until July 1983)

#9 “it doesn’t seem to me that bonnie tyler has the slightest inkling that what she’s singing isn’t really of planet-stopping importance”

I was just thinking exactly the same thing while I was trying to fathom out why I might prefer karaoke versions of a song to its original. I think anyone I’ve seen singing it in a bar on a drunken night out has clearly realised that it’s a piece of over-blown fun and have performed it accordingly. Bonnie Tyler doesn’t give any indication that she understands that it’s a ‘fun’ song, and that makes her performance feel (unkowingly) pompous to me.

TV Sketchwatch: Was it Little & Large who did a parody of this where the guitarist kept of telling the singer to “Turn around” because her back was to the camera?

It might have been Kenny Everett. Either way, it made me laugh when I was ten (I didn’t care for this at the time, either)

Light entertainment watch. Bonnie has appeared on a really mixed assortment of shows over the years;

THE FREDDIE STARR SHOWCASE: with Bonnie Tyler, Phil Thornalley, Otiz Cannelloni, Gonzalez, Steve Lange, John Themis (1983)

LADYBIRDS: with Bonnie Tyler (1983)

LENNIE AND JERRY: with Patrick Moore, Doctor Magnus Pyke, Bonnie Tyler (1979)

LEO: with Peter Skellern, Tina Turner, Bonnie Tyler (1984)

LIVE FROM THE PALLADIUM: with Victor Borge, The Shadows, Bonnie Tyler, Mike Oldfield (1987)

THE MONTREUX ROCK FESTIVAL: with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Art Of Noise, Belouis Some, Bronski Beat, Eighth Wonder, E.L.O., Paul Hardcastle, Marilyn Martin, Ready For The World, Bonnie Tyler (1986)

NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS: with Simon Amstell, Bill Bailey (Team Captain), Phill Jupitus (Team Captain), Melanie C, Bonnie Tyler, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Adam Buxton (2007)

REVOLVER: with Roy Hill Band, The Vibrators, Chris Hill, Les Ross, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Bonnie Tyler, The Buzzcocks, Sore Throat, Kandidate (1978)

RUSSELL HARTY: with Sadie Galvin, Bonnie Tyler, Toby Halick (1977)

THREE OF A KIND: with Bonnie Tyler (1983)

WOGAN: with Norman Tebbit, Anthony Andrews, Julie Walters, Shakin’ Stevens, Bonnie Tyler (1984)

WOGAN: with Michael J. Fox, Ian Botham, Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog, Bonnie Tyler, Stevie Wonder (1985)

WOGAN: with Clive Dunn, Bonnie Tyler, Roy Walker, Jane Walmsley (1986)

WOGAN: with Michael Buerk, Ron Eyre, Lucy Knowles, Rebecca Branford, Mike Oldfield, Bonnie Tyler, Emma Thompson (1987)

#12 but wouldn’t it be even better to see an absolutley serious karaoke singing really going for it? actually there’s a good greil marcus piece about a karaoke performer investing huge emotional weight in a song that was pretty much a joke to its original performer. but we’ll see about that in six months, bunny time. oh, and again in twenty-odd years, i think.

I disliked it at the time – maybe it’s my changing tastes, but when a record like this is so prevalent, you do feel rather bludgeoned by it. With Steinman, I dislike his pomp on all but a few tracks – when something works, I can love it, as I do on this and Bat Out Of Hell. (I’ve always liked bike/car crash songs, for some reason.)

#12: Bonnie Tyler doesn’t give any indication that she understands that it’s a ‘fun’ song

Dear God man, why should she? I can see most of the arguments against this song, but surely you’re not saying it would be improved by a sneer or a smirk?

As regards the comparison in the first sentence, show me something as awesome as this video inspired by Wuthering Heights, and we’ll talk.

(but then it will surprise no-one who knows me that I don’t consider sublime vs ridiculous to be a difficult choice, or even a proper choice at all).

#20 You can’t beat a good car crash song! Personally my favourite is “I Want Me Baby Back” by Jimmy Cross in which we hear the story of the other vehicle involved in the leader of the pack’s fatal accident. Admittedly it’s a little short on the ‘song’ element but it’s worth it for the lyrics: “well… when I come to I looked around… and there was the leader… and THERE was the pack… and over there was my Baby …and over THERE was my Baby …and WAY over there was my Baby!”

P.S. I think I know the reason you like songs about bike/car crashes, by the way …they skid more!?!

#22 I think I’m saying it would be improved by a singer who isn’t Bonnie Tyler! I’d probably prefer it if it was sung by Meat Loaf, to be honest – he seems to have mastered the requisite ‘twinkle in his eye’ to carry off even the most emotionally overwrought of Steinman compositions with a warmth (and, dare I say, ‘sense of irony’) which I feel Tyler’s performance lacks.

And none of that is an argument against the SONG, by the way. As a piece of song-writing I think it has its merits. This is one of those instances where I have a more positive view of the SONG than I do of the RECORD.

I wonder if anyone has ever done a light wistful acoustic version of this? (like Beth Orton’s cover of the Ronettes’ Wall of Sound epic “I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine”) I think I’d quite enjoy that.

I was going to comment going AWESOME WONDERFUL BRILLIANT A++++ earlier but didn’t think I could do it justice in the 30 seconds I had to spare – the song is epic and bombastic and totally THUNDEROUS. The video is just as good! Argh words are still failing me now – I think this is the musical equivalent of Galactus eating universes. Dudes, the choirboys have glowing eyes :-O

(Damn, you’ve got to be quick around here. I wrote this on my laptop this afternoon after reading the first few comments, and come back after dinner to post it only to see half its thunder stolen. Ah well. Here’s what I wrote a few hours ago:)

It’s impossible to choose one song to sum up the 1980s, but if I were choosing one to sum up 1983 it would have to be this. The most striking thing about the UK charts compared to the Australian ones is how briefly your number ones reigned compared to ours; it’s a rare exception indeed that dominated your charts for as long as this did ours (I won’t be mentioning the obvious parallel for fear of the Bunny). ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ sat on top in Oz for six weeks: six weeks of backlit big hair and over-literal bright-eyed kids on Countdown; six weeks of lyrics that seemed meaningful when puffed up with musical bombast but fell flatter than a flathead on the floor of a flat-bottomed boat on closer inspection. But what bombast! Has a number one ever felt more over-the-top than this? And shouldn’t that be the aim of every glory-obsessed hitmaker?

It was clearly Jim Steinman’s aim. First he masterminded Meatloaf, another performer Aussies took to their hearts (Bat Out of Hell sold a gazillion copies there, like everywhere), and when Meatloaf over-the-topped his vocal chords one time too many Steinman released Bad for Good, the Meatloaf album you have when you aren’t having meatloaf. One of my high school art teachers was obsessed with that, and played it all the time in class; I’ve since seen it described as a notorious turkey, although really only the vocalist had changed (‘Meatloaf’s off, love – it’s turkey tonight’). And this, too, could have been a Meatloaf track, or a Steinman solo track, though I doubt it would have been as endearing without Tyler’s rasp – as if she were ruining her vocal chords in the act of recording, that’s how devoted she was to wringing totally the last drop out of this eclipsed heart.

‘Total Eclipse’ holds a special place for me in this Popular journey, because it’s the first actual single I helped push to number one back in the day. My three dollars went towards that first week or two of Australian chart dominance, and is no doubt helping keep Steinman (if not Tyler) in the gaudy rock-star luxury that such a hit demands. No one involved in ‘Total Eclipse’ could possibly go on to a quiet retirement of carefully managed investment portfolios: Steinman and Tyler today must either be living it large in coastal mansions or living in poverty after burning through all their cash, there can be no in-between. And I’m not about to look them up to prove myself wrong.

Naturally, I was part of the backlash, and palmed this single off on my brother too, so I couldn’t even tell you what the b-side was. But 26 years later I can still remember the whole thing without checking YouTube, and now know that there a lot worse ways to reach number one than this: a lot of sillier, weedier, less infectious and less impassioned ways. I hope you kept your millions, Jim and Bonnie, because you earned them. 9, before I lose my resolve and listen to it again and award it 6.

Meat Loaf, not Meatloaf, sorry. For some reason I think of him as someone with no space.

UK and US charts temporarily converging at this point… Last five entries also huge hits in US… 10 of last 13 entries, in fact, dating back to “Fame.” Meanwhile US press talking about a “Second British Invasion”…

I dislike this so much, and the same goes for Steinman & Lunch Meat & I’ve never understood how those records became hits, but that’s another story. Aside from the bevy of modern-thinking 12″ funk singles of the day, I really hate 80s music. Bonnie shoulda quit after “It’s A Heartache”. And thanks #24 for making me remember “I Want My Baby Back”. HOT DANG – PAYDIRT!!!

my mum was a big fan of the loaf, for some reason — i think she was tickled by the notion of a big fat sex symbol (my dad has always been gaunt and wiry)

For someone as resolutely Steinman-averse as myself (there’s a Number One of his coming up many years from now which I find almost impossible to sit through), I can’t offer any rational explanation for why I love this record so much. Although I like what wichitalineman says at #19: “I think it’s the ONLY Steinman hit with any heart.”. Overblown, overstuffed, operatic, like Punk Never Happened – all my principle aesthetic objections to Bat Out Of Hell were re-stated, and yet I still fell hard. Maybe it’s just the added diva-ness, and I’m just a total sucker for a screaming diva playing the victim…

Incidentally, I have long fantasised about sneaking into the backroom of a gay club, and addressing the heaving throng with Bonnie’s killer couplet: “Once upon a time there was light in my life, now there’s only love in the dark…” Oh, I’m sure they’d all see the funny side.

#38 – Oddly enough, I can empathize with your reaction and the other God-it’s-horrible ones here, to the point where it feels as if my score is oscillating between 9 and 1; but Tom’s wonderful “balladosaurus” phrase and “then the planet she’s standing on explodes, or something” put me in such a good-natured frame of mind that I could only recall it fondly, a feeling that persisted even when I did finally listen to it again this morning. It’s weird, though; out of thousands of CDs and records and MP3s, I own nothing with Steinman’s name attached, and the only one I ever did was this single, which I gave away within months of buying it 26 years ago. It seems really strange that I feel so well-disposed towards a song that bears no relation to 99.9% of my adult musical tastes. The only reason can be that it so thoroughly sums up the feeling of being fifteen for me, which is totally contingent on the time and place that I happened to be fifteen. But that’s been the fascination of Popular to me as a reader all this time: seeing Tom and the rest of you retracing your own personal journeys through these songs, and trying to figure out how your subjective impressions and memories relate to their actual quality, if any.

I still think that bombast can be entertaining, though, even if one spends one’s middle-aged evenings listening to Bon Iver and the National (ahem); and this has to be one of the best examples of pull-out-all-the-stops, set-the-controls-for-the-heart-of-the-Sun bombast in chart history.

And actually, this probably has left a bigger impression on my tastes than I’d acknowledged, because I’ve spent most of the last decade as a huge fan of Muse.

Well well well, what a difference a day makes! All the bile and venom that I was confidently expecting for this magnificent specimen of theatrical pop, now oozing out of the wood work! I mean, how dare anybody like this, say the Cool Police!

I say again, I love it.

#43 – Heh! Well, we’d hate to let you down, Rosie! That said, I took something of a sabbatical from the Cool Police during 1983 – hence perhaps the fondness for “Down Under”, the unqualified love for Phil Collins’ “You Can’t Hurry Love”… and that year’s guiltiest pleasure of all (takes deep breath), Mike Oldfield’s “Moonlight Shadow”. (Inescapable on German radio in the autumn, as someone said on another thread.) My first six-to-nine months of 1983 were all about embracing the mainstream. Hell, I even bought a pair of trousers from Top Man, to match my lovely “Limahl” hairdo…

#45 – Don’t worry, mike, we Oldfield fans find your pleasuring Not Guilty. (I was resisting the opportunity to wax lyrical on Bonnie Tyler’s 1987 appearance on an Oldfield single, the unexciting “Islands”, but now you’ve forced me to come out. But my fandom has been pretty muted for the past decade, so I can’t see any reason to bother you all with it from here on.)

I must admit I didn’t mind Bonnie Tyler so much during her “Lost in France” phase …I just couldn’t stand the various phases after they found her again and she kept releasing all those god-awful records!