Bonnie Tyler wrote ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ for the musical ‘Nosferatu’

Turn around. If you get a little lonely every now and then and feel a pair of fangs on your neck, it’s because Bonnie Tyler‘s biggest hit was initially intended for a vampire musical.

Tyler’s 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” topped the charts in several countries and helped define the sound of the ’80s, but in an interview on Monday, November 27, Tyler said the song was initially intended for Broadway.

“I had just signed with Sony and wanted to switch from country rock to rock,” Tyler, 72, said. The guard. “I had seen Meat Loaf on the BBC Old gray whistle test when I did ‘Bat Out of Hell,’ so I told Muff Winwood at Sony that I wanted to work with Jim Steinman, who wrote and produced for Meat Loaf.

Steinman, who died in 2021 at the age of 73, liked the way Tyler sounded and invited her to meet him at his apartment overlooking Central Park. During the meeting he played a grand piano as a singer Rory Dodd sang a tune Steinman was working on. “He told me that years earlier he had started writing the song for a future musical version of Nosferatu, but never finished it,” Tyler recalls.

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That tune was “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and Tyler said she “instantly understood what an incredible song it was.” She added: “I poured my heart out when I sang it. We shot the video in a haunting gothic former asylum in Surrey. The watchdogs would not set foot in the rooms downstairs where they gave people electric shocks.”

Dodd said The guard that Steinman playing “Eclipse” for Tyler was “the only time I ever saw him play for anyone.” Dodd added that he had been singing for ten hours when Steinman “asked me to play my lead role in the duet for ‘Eclipse.’ So I sing at two in the morning: ‘Turn around bright eyes’. The long hours paid off, however, as together he and Tyler created what became a huge hit.

“Total Eclipse of the Heat” reached No. 1 in Tyler’s native Britain, the United States and a handful of other countries. The song also went platinum in 2011 when the RIAA shifted its qualifications at the turn 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 would always say, ‘Dang. That song should have been mine!'” Meat Loaf, who died in 2022 at the age of 74, would get his own epic power ballad from Steinman 10 years after “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with “I’d Do Anything for Love ” from 1993. But I won’t do that).”