Bonnie Tyler, singer of epic ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ dies at 75

Bonnie Tyler, the gravelly voiced, Grammy-nominated Welsh pop star best known for singing the chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in 1983 and seeing new generations succumb to its bombastic charms during solar and lunar eclipses, has died. She was 75.

Tyler died “unexpectedly” in a hospital in Portugal where she was being treated for an illness, her family said on Thursday in a statement on her website. She was hospitalised in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery and was later placed in an induced coma.

“Bonnie’s family and team are heartbroken to announce that Bonnie unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for, her family said.

Tyler earned three Grammy nods, represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 – where she came in 19th – and was awarded an MBE for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth in 2023, all largely thanks to “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which has had more than 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017 and 2024.

The song spent four weeks at No 1, the video has surpassed 1 billion views and when Stereogum re-evaluated it in 2020, the music outlet declared it an “extinction-level event rendered in musical form”.

“It’s pop music as heart-pounding, chest-thumping, blood-gargling, heavens-falling passion explosion. It’s sheer spectacle. It’s fireworks and lasers and lightning and thunder. It soars and swoops and barrel-rolls,” the site said.