Turn around. If every now and then you get a little bit lonely and feel some fangs in your neck, it’s because Bonnie Tyler’s biggest hit was initially meant for a vampire musical.
Tyler’s 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” topped the charts in several countries and went on to help define the sound of the ’80s, but in a Monday, November 27, interview, Tyler shared that the song was initially meant for Broadway.
“I’d just signed to Sony and wanted to change from country rock to rock,” Tyler, 72, told The Guardian. “I’d seen Meat Loaf on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test doing ‘Bat Out of Hell,’ so I told Muff Winwood at Sony that I wanted to work with Jim Steinman, who wrote for and produced Meat Loaf.”
Steinman, who died in 2021 at age 73, liked how Tyler sounded and invited her to meet him at his apartment overlooking Central Park. During the meeting, he played a grand piano while singer Rory Dodd sang a tune Steinman was working on. “He told me he had started writing the song for a prospective musical version of Nosferatu years before but never finished it,” Tyler recalled.
That tune was “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and Tyler said that she “understood immediately what an incredible song it was.” She added: “I poured my heart out singing it. We shot the video in a frightening gothic former asylum in Surrey. The guard dogs wouldn’t set foot in the rooms downstairs where they used to give people electric shock treatment.”
Dodd told The Guardian that Steinman playing “Eclipse” for Tyler was “the only time I’ve ever seen him play for somebody.” Dodd added that he had been singing for 10 hours when Steinman “asked me to do my lead part of the duet for ‘Eclipse.’ So, I’m singing, ‘Turn around bright eyes’ at 2 a.m.” The long hours paid off, though, because together, he and Tyler made what became a massive hit.
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“Total Eclipse of the Heat” reached No. 1 in Tyler’s native United Kingdom, the United States and a handful of other countries. The song was also certified platinum in 2011 when the RIAA shifted its qualifications at the start of the century.
Tyler said that around the time she and Steinman were recording the song, Meat Loaf “had lost his voice, and after it was a hit, he always used to say: ‘Dang. That song should have been mine!’” Meat Loaf, who died in 2022 at age 74, would get his own epic power ballad from Steinman 10 years after “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with 1993’s “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).”
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