In 1981 Welsh-born Bonnie Tyler parted company with RCA Records, the record company where Tyler released her first single in 1975. After four albums with the record company, the singer became unhappy with the path RCA wanted her to take, so had to She has to find a new record label, manager and producer.
When he signs with CBS Records, she will work with David Aspden and Jim Steinman. By handing over the album in 1983 Faster than the speed of the night. Jim Steinman writes for the record, including Total Eclipse Of The Heart, Bonnie Tyler’s first No. 1 in the US and UK. Therefore, the single is also the most successful song of her career. Despite the fact that in the Netherlands the song stuck at #5 on the Top 40, the power ballad is still growing into a classic.
Romantic…vampire?
The lyrics of Total Eclipse Of The Heart are often thought to be about love and desire. And it’s true, but the style in which Steinman wrote the song in the early ’80s is a little less romantic than you might think. The songwriter originally wrote the song for a musical version of the 1922 vampire film Nosferatu, originally titled Vampires in love. “If someone listens to the lyrics, it’s actually vampirism,” Steinman said in 2002. playbill. “It’s all about darkness, the power of darkness and the place of love in darkness.”
If you listen to the lyrics with this knowledge, sentences like “Turn around, sparkling eyes” and “Every now and then I get a little freaked out” suddenly take on a completely different meaning…
