Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh singer best known for her 1983 power ballad Total Eclipse of the Heart, has died aged 75 after a period of ill-health. The song, written by Jim Steinman and paired with a gothic MTV-era video, became her signature hit and endured for decades, returning to the top of the Apple music charts after the North American total solar eclipse of April 2024 and surpassing a billion YouTube views in 2023.

Born Gaynor Hopkins in Skewen, near Swansea, she grew up one of six children in a musical family and survived tuberculosis as a child. After being spotted singing in a Swansea nightclub, she signed to RCA in 1976 and scored early hits with Lost in France and It's a Heartache, her distinctive huskiness stemming from a 1977 throat operation. Total Eclipse of the Heart reached No 1 in 10 countries and sold six million copies worldwide, while other collaborations included Holding Out for a Hero (1984) for the Footloose soundtrack; she also wrote or recorded songs that became hits for Aswad, Cher and Tina Turner, and turned down the 1983 James Bond theme Never Say Never Again.