Bonnie said: “I got a broadsheet newspaper and I made an effort to write all the first names I came across on one list and all the surnames on another and I went through them both and came up with Bonnie Tyler. And it’s been a brilliant name.”
She released Total Eclipse of the Heart five years after Lost in France. It changed her life.
“The first time I heard it was when [songwriter] Jim Steinman just played it on the piano in New York,” she said.
“He sang the song all the way through and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this song is amazing. I can’t believe Jim is giving it to me’.
“When I recorded the song, I thought no-one is going to end up playing this because it’s so long.
“The original version is eight minutes long.”
But a four-minute radio version took the world by storm, with the ballad spending two weeks as UK number one, and four weeks in the US.
Bonnie was the first – and only – Welsh artist to have a number one in the US.
She went on to have a string of other hits, including Holding out for a Hero, It’s A Heartache, Together, and If You Were A Woman [And I Was A Man].
