The Epic Track: “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

Editor’s Note: There are certain tracks that are, well, “epic” — memorable, larger than life, carved into music history. In this series, we look at one of them.

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Sometimes a song’s ubiquity can obscure its merits. Especially when that song topped the singles charts throughout the world, there’s an inclination to wonder if something so popular must also somehow be lacking in substance. Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is a case in point. Though it doesn’t appear on “worst songs of the 1980s” lists as regularly as some of the era’s other big hits, the song remains something of a guilty pleasure.

One of the contributing factors in the song’s reception might have been that, with one exception, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” didn’t sound like anything else on the pop charts at the time. That exception is very instructive. For three of the four weeks that Tyler’s song held the #1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100, the #2 song was “Making Love Out Of Nothing At All” by Air Supply. This was another song characterized by yearning lyrics and sharply contrasting dynamics, and was also composed and produced by Jim Steinman.

Writing about the track for the UK music magazine Smash Hits, one reviewer said of the composer that, “[He] doesn’t write songs – he writes five-minute operas,” echoing a comment made several years earlier about Bruce Springsteen. The quote is fitting in some ways, not just because of the larger-than-life emotions on display but also because Steinman cited Springsteen as an inspiration for Bat Out of Hell, the hugely popular album by Meat Loaf for which he wrote all the songs. At the heart of Steinman’s work, though, is the sensibility of a dramatist, which makes sense for an artist with a background in musical theatre that includes work with legendary producer Joseph Papp.

Many of Steinman’s songs are best appreciated as miniature plays, offering intimate dramas between couples, even when just one voice is heard. “Left in the Dark”, a song initially released on Steinman’s own album Bad or Good, then later recorded by both Meat Loaf and Barbara Streisand, is a prime example.

The song is effectively a monologue directed at an unfaithful lover.

I should have known that it was coming to this, but I must have been blind

I bet you still got a trace of her love in your eyes, and you’ve still got her eyes on your mind

Like the other songs on Bad for Good, Steinman originally wrote “Left in the Dark” to be part of the follow-up to Bat Out of Hell. When vocal problems left Meat Loaf unable to perform for a time, Steinman opted to record the songs himself, recruiting many of the same musicians from Bat Out of Hell. Along with producer Todd Rundgren, this included vocalist Rory Dodd, who sang lead on several. tracks – including the Top 40 hit “Rock and Roll Dreams Came Through” – as well as drummer Max Weinberg and pianist Roy Bittan from the E Street Band.

Dodd, Bittan, and Weinberg were all in the studio the following year when Steinman recorded “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with Bonnie Tyler. Tyler had achieved success in 1977 with the worldwide hit “It’s a Heartache” but found herself treading water artistically and commercially over the next few years. A change of record labels provided the opportunity for a change of musical direction, and Tyler specifically sought out Steinman as a collaborator.

“I’d seen Meat Loaf on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test doing ‘Bat Out of Hell’, so I told [record executive] Muff Winwood that I wanted to work with Jim Steinman,” Tyler recalled in a 2023 interview for UK newspaper The Guardian. “Muff looked at me like I was barmy and told me that Jim would never do it.”

Tyler’s insistence led to a meeting with the writer-producer, and a few weeks later, Steinman first played “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for her. “I understood immediately what an incredible song it was,” said Tyler. “He told me he had started writing the song for a prospective musical of Nosferatu years before, but never finished it.”

Lyrically, the song’s roots extended even further. Its repeated refrain “Turn around bright eyes” – sung by Rory Dodd – appeared in The Dream Engine, a musical Jim Steinman wrote and performed in while a student at Amherst College in 1969. While the apocalyptic overtones of The Dream Engine are far removed from Nosferatu, this intersection of works points to two truths about Steinman. There was always more to his work than troubled romance and protracted adolescence, and he never let a good musical idea go to waste.

In keeping with the song’s theatrical origins, it fits Steinman’s pattern of conversational lyrics, with Rory Dodd providing a simple but effective counterpoint to Tyler’s lead.

(Turn around) Every now and then, I know you’ll never be the boy you always wanted to be

(Turn around) But every now and then, I know you’ll always be the only boy who wanted me the way that I am

The musical setting, which builds from a restrained piano figure and plaintive vocals to an intense wall-of-sound, likewise reflected Jim Steinman’s interests. “Most people don’t like extremes. Extremes scare them,” he once observed. “I start at ‘extreme’ and go from there.” While relatively weak vocals had kept Bad for Good from reaching its full potential, this was not an issue with Bonnie Tyler singing. Her performance keeps pace with the building intensity of the music, reaching a crescendo with a suitably evocative lyric.

I don’t know what to do, and I’m always in the dark.

We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

The album version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” ran for nearly seven minutes but was shortened to a more radio-friendly four-and-a-half minutes. For many people, though, the ideal length is likely the 5:34 runtime of the music video. Made by Highlander director Russell Mulcahy, whose music video credits include Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy” and The Buggles’ historic “Video Killed the Radio Star”, the video complements the song perfectly. Filmed in an abandoned sanitarium made to look like a boy’s boarding school, the video defies easy description but nevertheless feels intuitively right for the song, hinting at the song’s roots in vampire mythology.

That link was further acknowledged when the song appeared in the musical Dance of the Vampires, a musical adaptation of Roman Polanski’s 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers. The show ran successfully in Austria and Germany prior to a troubled and short-lived Broadway production in 2002. “That was an accident almost. I’m surprised it stayed in, the composer said of the song’s inclusion during an interview for the Broadway publication Playbill,” I was trying to come up with a love song and I remembered I actually wrote [“Total Eclipse of the Heart”] to be a vampire love song.”

More than 40 years on since the song’s release, it stands as a defining song for both Steinman and Bonnie Tyler. Despite some subsequent chart success throughout Europe, Tyler had only one more major hit – “Holding out for a Hero” – a song from the movie Footloose also written and produced by Steinman. Steinman pursued an eclectic series of projects over the next decade before reuniting with Meat Loaf for the hugely popular 1993 sequel to Bat Out of Hell.

He was far less involved in Meat Loaf’s third Bat Out of Hell album in 2006, but a decade later succeeded in bringing a musical inspired by the album to the stage in the US, UK, and elsewhere. He died in 2021 following a series of health issues, leaving behind an immense legacy of popular and distinctive songs, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” foremost among them.

-Don Klees

Photo: Bonnie Tyler (Stefan Brending via Wikimedia Commons)