Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Bonnie Tyler, who died on July 8 at age 75, by looking at her only No. 1: the irreplaceable “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
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There have been nearly 1,200 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in its nearly 68-year history to date, and you might not need more than one hand to count the No. 1s more totemic and unique than Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” While in many ways an inextricable product of its time, “Total Eclipse” has nonetheless risen above its era’s trappings to become one of the most indelible — and in its own way, timeless — hit songs of the MTV era, a power ballad, heartbreak classic and karaoke anthem that has carved out a place in pop music history entirely its own. Put simply: No one doesn’t know “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and certainly nobody would ever confuse it for any other song.
That singularity can largely be attributed to the combination of the two unmistakable, and now sadly both departed, voices at its center: writer/producer Jim Steinman and singer Bonnie Tyler. Both artists had found major crossover success in the late ’70s — Steinman as the writer on Meat Loaf’s RIAA diamond-certified opera-rock blockbuster Bat Out of Hell, Tyler with the country-rock torch song “It’s a Heartache,” a No. 3 Hot 100 hit — but had struggled to find similar mainstream embrace in the opening years of the ’80s, before finding one another.
