Looking back at Bonnie Tyler's impact on pop culture

Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler has died at the age of 75, with fans across generations mourning her death.

While her songs are hits from the 1980s, her music continuously found newer, younger audiences thanks to it soundtracking memorable scenes in movies throughout the decades.

Here's a brief look at the impact Tyler had on pop culture.

What were Bonnie Tyler's biggest hits?

Power ballad Total Eclipse of the Heart is an undeniable classic which, as of this morning, had chalked up a staggering 1.2 billion plays on Spotify alone.

It's hard to top a billion streams, but Holding Out For a Hero and It's a Heartache are two stand-outs that complete Tyler's golden trio of pop songs.

Her first hit on the music charts was a song called Lost in France, from her debut album The World Starts Tonight.

Her covers have also had some serious staying power, including her piano-heavy rendition of Have You Ever Seen the Rain? which completely re-imagined the Creedence Clear Water Revival's original version.

And it would be a crime not to point out that Tina Turner's classic NRL anthem Simply The Best was actually a cover of Tyler's original version of the song, which was just called The Best.

Tyler's music stands up on its own, but became even more powerful when used in film, so let's look at the impact she had on cinema.

Footloose, 1984

Two young blokes diving tractors might sound pretty dull, but the concept made for an epic scene when paired with Holding Out For a Hero in Footloose.

The song plays as Kevin Bacon's character, Ren, faces off against Jim Youngs's character, Chuck, in a high-stakes, low-speed game of chicken.

Tyler's gravelly voice rings out, building tension as the two fierce opponents pootle towards each other on clunky, slow-moving farm machinery.

Bacon paid tribute to Tyler after her death, calling her "one of the great voices of rock" in a statement to Entertainment Weekly.

"I could not imagine chicken racing a tractor to any other song. RIP," he said.

Shrek 2, 2004

The Shrek franchise was never going to fail, but its lingering popularity might not have been as potent without the inclusion of Holding Out For a Hero in a pivotal scene towards the end of the sequel.

Performed by Jennifer Saunders, who voiced the Fairy Godmother, the song blasts out as Shrek, Donkey and their fairytale creature mates valiantly storm a castle to reach Princess Fiona in time.

The fast-paced action scene is peppered with pop culture references and cut with snippets of the Fairy Godmother belting out the track on stage wearing a red sparkly dress, building up to a thrilling climax.

For years now, people have been reposting the scene on social media along with a variation of "the greatest musical moment in cinematic history" or "the best action sequence of all time" in the captions and comment section.

And in a world of ever diminishing attention spans on social media, many will find themselves watching the scene in its entirety when it inevitably pops up on their feed.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid, 2010

Diary of a Wimpy Kid features a scene where schoolchildren are auditioning for parts in a play and, instead of a song from the production, they're instructed to sing Total Eclipse of the Heart.

The film features a montage of youngsters attempting the song with varying degrees of success, before the main character, Greg Heffley, nails it.

It introduced the song to a whole new generation of young fans.

The last showgirl, 2025

In perhaps one of the more poignant uses of Total Eclipse of the Heart, The Last Showgirl features Jamie Lee Cutis dancing to the track in a casino.

With frosty, metallic-blue painted eyes and cheap-looking orange coat over a black leotard, Curtis gives the performance her all.

But no one seems to notice.

She dances on a podium surrounded by slot machines, with gamblers barely paying her a passing glimpse as they move through the casino.

The scene wasn't originally in the script and Curtis filmed it in just one take with little warning.

But it was one of the most moving and talked about scenes in the film, with Curtis telling Empire the sequence "broke my heart. Kills me every time".