Musica Total

[Mirta Dozar]

Thesong, a duet with Rory Dodd, became Tyler's biggest career hit, topping the UK Singles Chart, and becoming the fifth-best-selling single in 1983 in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the single spent four weeks at the top of the charts, keeping another Steinman penned song "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" by Air Supply from reaching the top spot (a song Tyler would later cover in 1995),[6] and it was Billboard's number-six song of the year for 1983. The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

Worldwide, the single has sales in excess of six million copies[7] and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over one million copies after its release, updated to platinum in 2001 when the certification threshold changed.[8] In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's third favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV.[9]

After her contract with RCA Records ended in 1981, Tyler found a new manager in David Aspden. After seeing Meat Loaf perform "Bat Out of Hell" live on The Old Grey Whistle Test, she approached Meat Loaf's writer, Jim Steinman, and asked him to be her producer.[10] Tyler aimed to create an album utilizing the Wall of Sound production techniques of Phil Spector, and she believed that Steinman was the only person who could create the same sound, as Spector had mostly retired from the music business.[11] Tyler visited Steinman in his apartment in New York in April 1982 with her manager, where she was presented with two tracks: "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" and "Goin' Through the Motions". She stated that had she not liked the songs Steinman played for her, he would have rejected Tyler's invitation to collaborate.[10] She returned to his studio apartment weeks later, where Steinman and Rory Dodd performed "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for her. Steinman also hand-picked the recording band for the song, which included Dodd as a featured vocalist (the "Turn around..." refrain).[12]

The lyric "Turn around, bright eyes" had originally appeared in Steinman's 1969 college musical The Dream Engine.[13] Steinman had originally written the song's verse melody for his score to the 1980 film A Small Circle of Friends.[14]

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" had to be shortened for radio play. Tyler did not believe that the song was radio-friendly at its full length; the song was reduced from seven minutes and two seconds to four minutes and thirty seconds.[15]

The power ballad[16] became Tyler's highest-charting song in several countries, peaking at No. 1 in the United States, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. At its peak, it sold 60,000 copies per day and approximately 6 million copies in total.[7] It won the Variety Club award in the UK for best recording artist of 1983.[17] The song also made number 82 of VH1's top 100 love songs.

with 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', I was trying to come up with a love song and I remembered I actually wrote that to be a vampire love song. Its original title was 'Vampires in Love' because I was working on a musical of Nosferatu, the other great vampire story. If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in the dark...[19]

He also told People that he thought Tyler sounded like John Fogerty and wrote the song "to be a showpiece for her voice."[20] Tyler described the song as "a challenge [to sing]," stating that she "[doesn't] like songs that anybody can sing. I like songs that need a lot of energy." After Steinman presented her with the song, she told The Times, "I just had shivers right up my spine...I couldn't wait to actually get in and record it."[21]

According to Meat Loaf, Steinman had written the song, along with "Making Love Out of Nothing at All", for Meat Loaf's album Midnight at the Lost and Found; however, Meat Loaf's record company refused to pay Steinman, and he wrote separate songs himself. "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was given to Bonnie Tyler and "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" to Air Supply.[22] Tyler has denied this claim.[23] "Meat Loaf was apparently very annoyed that Jim gave that to me," Tyler stated. "But Jim said he didn't write it for Meat Loaf, that he only finished it after meeting me."[24] Steinman said to People that he considered it "an aria to me, a wagnerian-like onslaught of sound and emotion. I wrote it to be a showpiece for her voice."[10]

In an interview with journalist Mick Wall shortly after the release of Meat Loaf's 2006 album Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, Steinman stated: "I didn't write [Total Eclipse of the Heart] for anyone but Bonnie." Steinman believed that CBS were expecting him to write something similar to "It's a Heartache", but he had different ideas.[25]

The music video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was directed by Russell Mulcahy[26] and was filmed at the Holloway Sanatorium, a large Victorian Gothic hospital near Virginia Water, Surrey, England.[27] The surrealist video features Tyler clad in white, dreaming or fantasizing about students in a boys' boarding school. Young men are seen dancing and participating in various school activities and singing in a choir.

A long-running urban legend is that the boy who appears throughout the video and who shakes Tyler's hand at the end is former Italian footballer Gianfranco Zola. In a 2012 interview, Zola confirmed that he did not appear in the video.[29]

Since the song's release, Tyler has performed "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in all of her concerts.[31] "I sing it much better now than I used to," she told The Huffington Post. "I think my voice is probably not as husky as it was, I think it's mellowed a bit."[32] The song was performed at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards, held at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, on 28 February 1984.[33]

Mike DeGagne from AllMusic retrospectively described "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as "one of the finest ballads ever to hit radio." He noted the "lush instrumentation" and said that Tyler's voice "produced the perfect type of 'desperate lovelorn' effect to suit the romantic lyrics." He described Roy Bittan's piano playing as "dreamy" and described Tyler's voice as "wonderfully gritty."[36] Donald A. Guarisco, also from AllMusic, retrospectively reviewed Faster Than the Speed of Night and noted the song as an "epic ballad", describing the whole album as "rock at its most melodramatic."[37] Jim Beviglia from American Songwriter said that Tyler's raspy vocals helped to legitimize the "melodrama inherent in the lyrics," and described the song as a "garment-rending, chest-beating [and] emotionally exhausting ballad" that suits the throes of a turbulent relationship.[20]

In a 2013 UK survey, the song came first in a list of most popular songs to sing in the shower, above songs by Justin Bieber, Robbie Williams, One Direction and Elton John.[38] In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's third-favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV.[39]

The song's lyrics compare an ended romance with an eclipse.[40] The song often receives publicity during solar eclipses and lunar eclipses.[41] "Total Eclipse of the Heart" received substantial media attention during the solar eclipse of 20 March 2015. Tyler's version received a 214% increase of Spotify streams throughout the day.[42] A similar impact was experienced during the solar eclipse of 21 August 2017, when Nielsen Music reported a 503% increase in record sales.[43] Around that time, the song hit number one on the iTunes chart.[44]

The song again reached No. 1 on the iTunes Top Songs chart in the US during the solar eclipse of 8 April 2024.[45] In the following week, Tyler re-entered the Billboard Artist 100 chart at No. 79,[46] and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" entered the LyricFind Global chart at No. 25,[47] the Canadian Digital Song Sales chart at No. 9,[48] and the US Digital Song Sales Chart at No. 5.[49]

Since the original release in 1983, Tyler has re-recorded the song numerous times. In 2004, she released a duet version of the song with Peter Brocklehurst on his album For You.[106] A solo version of the recording was released on her own studio album, Wings, the following year.

In January 2007, Tyler released another version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in collaboration with British punk-electronic group BabyPinkStar.[107] It peaked at no. 40 on the UK Independent Singles chart.[108] In 2009, Tyler released a version of the song with Welsh choral group Only Men Aloud!.[7] In 2011, Tyler re-recorded the song on an EP named after the song, released by Cleopatra Records.[109] In 2013, another version of the song was released as a bonus track from her album Rocks and Honey, available exclusively on the UK iTunes Store.

English singer Nicki French released a hi-NRG remake of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in October 1994 that was also a worldwide hit. It was included on her debut album, Secrets (1995). The song originally peaked at No. 54 on the UK Singles Chart in 1994 but reached No. 5 after being re-issued in January 1995.[114] In the United States, French's version peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it garnered frequent airplay on AC radio. It enjoyed greater success in Australia, spending four nonconsecutive weeks at No. 2. Elsewhere, the cover reached number 13 in New Zealand, number 16 in Canada, and peaked within the top 10 of several European countries.

According to French, her remake of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" became popular in the UK and the US in distinct remixes: "the slower version was the one that actually took a hold in the UK, where originally they started with the fast one and then decided to go with the [remix which began] in the same vein as the Bonnie Tyler version [and then] sped up when the chorus came in...In the US it was the [remix] which was fast all the way through."[117] The single earned French two awards at the 1995 Hi-NRG Music Awards, in the categories for "Single of the Year" and "Best Female Vocal Performance".[118] In 1996, the song was named "Best Hi-NRG 12-inch of the Year" at the International Dance Music Awards in Miami.[119]

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